"No, damn it!" he said under his breath, and, thrusting the case into
his pocket, slipped away unobserved.


§4.

He flung himself into a chair in his bedroom and puffed a blast of air
from his lungs.... Yes, it had been a narrow escape. He knew that if
he had put those beastly blue and white things on he would have been a
lost soul....

"You've got to pull yourself together, d'you hear?" he said to
himself. "You've got to do a lot of clear, steady, merciless
thinking--now, to-night. You've got to persuade yourself somehow that,
Foundlings or no Foundlings, this regeneration of mankind business may
still be set going--and by _you_."

He paced up and down the room, fuming. How recapture the generous
certitudes that had one by one been slipping away from him? He found
himself staring vacantly at the row of books on the little shelf by
his bed. One of them seemed suddenly to detach itself--he could almost
have sworn afterwards that he didn't reach out for it, but that it
hopped down into his hand....

"Sitting Up For The Dawn"! It was one of that sociological series by
which H.G. W*lls had first touched his soul to finer issues when he
was at the 'Varsity.

He opened it with tremulous fingers. Could it re-exert its old sway
over him now?