He saw before him long years of congenial fellowship, of bracing travel, of well-directed studiousness.
Let problems of sex and society go hang! He had found a better way.
On looking back over his life, how improbable it seemed, this happy issue out of crudity, turbulence, lack of purpose, weakness, insincerity, ignorance.

First and foremost he had to thank good old Dr Harvey, of Greystone; then, his sister, sleeping in her grave under the old chimes she loved; then, surely himself, that seed of good within him which had survived all adverse influences--watched, surely, by his unconscious self, guarded long, and now deliberately nurtured.

Might he not think well of himself.
His library, though for the most part the purchase of late years, contained books which reminded him of every period of his life.

Up yonder, on the top shelf, were two score volumes which had belonged to his father, the share that fell to him when he and his sister made the ordained division: scientific treatises out of date, an old magazine, old books of travel.

Strange that, in his times of folly, he had not sold these as burdensome rubbish; he was very glad now, when love and reverence for things gone by began to take hold upon him.