22
When Bill woke next morning it was ten o'clock; and his first
emotion, on a day that was to be crowded with emotions of various
kinds, was one of shame. The desire to do the fitting thing is
innate in man, and it struck Bill, as he hurried through his
toilet, that he must be a shallow, coarse-fibred sort of person,
lacking in the finer feelings, not to have passed a sleepless
night. There was something revolting in the thought that, in
circumstances which would have made sleep an impossibility for
most men, he had slept like a log. He did not do himself the
justice to recollect that he had had a singularly strenuous day,
and that it is Nature's business, which she performs quietly and
unromantically, to send sleep to tired men regardless of their
private feelings; and it was in a mood of dissatisfaction with the
quality of his soul that he left his room.
He had a general feeling that he was not much of a chap and that
when he died--which he trusted would be shortly--the world would
be well rid of him. He felt humble and depressed and hopeless.
Elizabeth met him in the passage. At the age of eleven or
thereabouts women acquire a poise and an ability to handle
difficult situations which a man, if he is lucky, manages to
achieve somewhere in the later seventies.
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