He reached his room, put the flower in a glass on the table, and walked up and down before it. It had come to a struggle between the sense of what was and the passionate wish for what might have been.
"It is late, sir," said his servant opening the door,--"and you were--"
"I am not going out."
"This evening, sir?"
"No--not at all to-day. Spenser!--I don't wish to see any body--let no one come near me."
The servant retired and Guy went on with his walk and his meditations, looking back over his life and reviewing, with a wiser ken now, the steps by which he had come. He compared the selfish disgust with which he had cast off the world with the very different spirit of little Fleda's look upon it that morning, the useless, self-pleasing, vain life he was leading, with her wish to be like the beloved disciple and do something to heal the troubles of those less happy than herself. He did not very well comprehend the grounds of her feeling or reasoning, but he began to see, mistily, that his own had been mistaken and wild.
His steps grew slower, his eye more intent, his brow quiet.
"She is right and I am wrong," he thought. "She is by far the nobler creature--worth, many such as I. Like her I cannot be--I cannot regain what I have lost,--I cannot undo what years have done. But I can be something other than I am! If there be a system of remedy, as there well may, it may as well take effect on myself first. She says everybody has his work, I believe her. It must in the nature of things be so. I will make it my business to find out what mine is, and when I have made that sure I will give myself to the doing of it. An Allwise Governor must look for service of me. He shall have it. Whatever my life be, it shall be to some end. If not what I would, what I can. If not the purity of the rose, that of tempered steel!"
Mr. Carleton walked his room for three hours; then rung for his servant and ordered him to prepare everything for leaving Paris the second day thereafter.
The next morning over their coffee he told his mother of his purpose.