and who was going farther. In the day-time he took them as a matter of
course, but now he regarded them rather solemnly. He went from one to
another, handling them, testing them, switching the lights of special
electrical devices on and off, like a boy with a new and serious
plaything. There was no one to laugh at him, and he did not laugh at
himself. He stood in the midst of his possessions, a little
insolently, with his head up, as though he were calling them up one by
one to bear him witness. He was self-made. He had torn his life out
of the teeth of circumstance. There was not an instrument, not a chair
or table in the lofty, dignified room that he had not paid for with
sweat and sacrifice and deprivation. No one had given him help that he
had not earned. Even in himself he had been handicapped. The boy he
had been had wanted things terribly--silly, useless, gaudy things that
would have ruined him as they had ruined his father. He remembered how
in the twilight of Acacia Grove he had listened to the music of far-off
processions, and had longed to run to meet them and march with the
jolly, singing people, and how once it had all come true, and he had
lied and stolen.

Once only. Then he had stamped temptation under foot. He had become
master of himself. And now he was not tempted any more by foolish
desires. He meant to do work that would put him in the front rank of
big men.

And, thinking of the old struggle, he threw out his hand, as he had
done that night when he had met Francey Wilmot, and clenched the
slender, powerful fingers as though he had life by the throat, smiling
a little in the cold, rather cruel way that Cosgrave knew--a theatrical
gesture, had it been less passionately sincere.