This, he knew, meant a loosing, a letting go, a surrender of his inner and honourable dreams, an evasion of that beckoning hand and a forgetting of that summoning voice which bade him to labour agonizingly yet awhile toward other aims.

The inner man, still exigent, now exhorted, now demanded, and always rebelled.
Franklin's face grew older.

Not all who looked upon him understood, for to be _hors concours_ is to be accursed.
Something was left to be desired in the vigour and energy of Franklin's daily life, once a daily joy in virile effort and exertion.

Still too much a man to pity himself, none the less he brooded.

His hopes and dreams, he reflected, had once flowered so beautifully, had shown so fair for one brief summer day, and lay now so dead and shrivelled and undone! There was no comfort in these later days.
And then he thought yearningly of the forceful drama of the wild life which had shrunk so rapidly into the humdrum of the uneventful.