moments he had been sorry that he had brought Gregson back into his life.  And with Gregson he was bringing back Eileen Brokaw.  He was more than sorry for that.  The thought of it made him grow warm and uncomfortable, though the night air from off the Bay was filled with the chill tang of the northern icebergs.  Again his thoughts brought him face to face with the old pictures, the old life.  With them came haunting memories of a Philip Whittemore who had once lived, and who had died; and with these ghosts of the past there surged upon him the loneliness which seemed to crush and stifle him.  Like one in a dream he was swept back.  Over the black spruce at his feet, far into the gray, misty distances beyond, over forests and mountains and the vast, grim silences his vision reached out until he saw life as it had begun for him, and as he had lived it for a time.  It had opened fair.  It had given promise.  It had filled him with hope and ambition.  And then it had changed.

Unconsciously he clenched his hands as he thought of what had followed, of the black days of ruin, of death, of the dissolution of all that he had hoped and dreamed for.  He had fought, because he was born a fighter.  He had risen again and again, only to find misfortune still at his face.  At first he had laughed, and had called it bad luck.  But the bad luck had followed him, dogging him with a persistence which developed in him a new perspective of things.  He dropped away from his clubs.  He began to measure men and women as he had not measured them before, and there grew in him slowly a revulsion for what those measurements revealed.  The spirit that was growing in him called out for bigger things, for the wild freedom which he had tasted for a time with Gregson—­for a life which was not warped by the gilded amenities of the crowded ballroom to-night, by the frenzied dollar-fight to-morrow.  No one could understand that change in him.  He could find no spirit in sympathy with him, no chord in another breast that he could reach out and touch and thrill with understanding.  Once he had hoped—­ and tried—­

A deep breath, almost a sigh, fell from his lips as he thought of that last night, at the Brokaw ball.  He heard again the laughter and chatter of men and women, the soft rustle of skirts—­and then the break, the silence, as the low, sweet music of his favorite waltz began, while he stood screened behind a bank of palms looking down into the clear gray eyes of Eileen Brokaw.  He saw himself as he had stood then, leaning over her slim white shoulders, intoxicated by her beauty, his face pale with the fear of what he was about to say; and he saw the girl, with her beautiful head thrown a little back, so that her golden hair almost touched his lips, waiting for him to speak.  For months he had fought against the fascination of her beauty.  Again and again he had almost surrendered to it, only to pull himself back in time.  He had seen this girl, as pure-looking