He had none of that feeling now.

No pretty vision came again near his bed, and he beheld his convalescence as a mistake.

He had come to a jumping-off place in his life--why had they not let him jump?
What was there left but the weary plod, plod, and dust of years?
He could have gone back to Carlow in better spirit if it had not been for the few dazzling hours of companionship which had transformed it to a paradise, but, gone, left a desert.

She, by the sight of her, had made him wish to live, and now, that he saw her no more, she made him wish to die.

How little she had cared for him, since she told him she did not care, when he had not meant to ask her.