What right had _he_ to enter into a world like that?
Why, even now, his legs ached because of his exertion in furrowing through a few hundred steps of foot-and-a-half snow! But the laugh succeeded in bringing him back into the reality of things.

He started at right angles, pushed into the maze of white-robed spruce and balsam, and turned back in the direction of the cabin over a new trail.

He was not in a good humour.

There possessed him an ingrowing and acute feeling of animosity toward himself.

Since the day--or night--fate had drawn that great, black curtain over his life, shutting out his sun, he had been drifting; he had been floating along on currents of the least resistance, making no fight, and, in the completeness of his grief and despair, allowing himself to disintegrate physically as well as mentally.