But, Ho-ho-hey! scoffed the mocking wind.
CHAPTER LXXIII
Wherein our Hero dabbles his Hands in the Turgid Waters of Philosophy, and brings up Some Grains of Truth from a Pebbly Bottom. A Chapter that the Frivolous would do well to skip—the Ironies being infrequent, if not wholly wanting; and the Humours lacking in the Comic Interest
For days Noll fretted restlessly about his room and the streets of the city.
He went back to his old haunts—to the practice of his assiduous idlenesses. But the fever had gone out of his pleasant habits; and the talk of his fellows was become stale.
He lingered on—lonesomely but doggedly.
So the days passed into weeks; the weeks stole away the months.
Noll could not shake off a strange sense of humiliation. Shrug his shoulders as he might at the pathetic silence that had taken the place of Betty’s mellow voice, humiliation nudged elbows with him, peered into his frowning eyes, was not to be rebuffed by his sullen face. He was a prey to self-contempt. The devil of regret takes hard snubbing. And no man lies intelligently to his own conscience.