Had he wasted all these miserable years to find himself abandoned, forgotten, perhaps even a dupe?
For the first time the sting of jealousy entered his soul.
Perhaps, unconsciously to himself, his strange and varying feelings that afternoon had been the gathering climax of his mental condition; at all events, in the sudden revulsion there was a shaking off of his apathetic thought; there was activity, even if it was the activity of pain.

Here was a mystery to be solved, a secret to be discovered, a past wrong to be exposed, an enemy or, perhaps, even a faithless love to be punished.
Perhaps he had even saved his reason at the expense of his love.

He quickly replaced the photograph on the mantel-shelf, returned the letter carefully to his pocket-book,--no longer a souvenir of the past, but a proof of treachery,--and began to mechanically undress himself.

He was quite calm now, and went to bed with a strange sense of relief, and slept as he had not slept since he was a boy.
The whole hotel had sunk to rest by this time, and then began the usual slow, nightly invasion and investment of it by nature.

For all its broad verandas and glaring terraces, its long ranges of windows and glittering crest of cupola and tower, it gradually succumbed to the more potent influences around it, and became their sport and playground.