abrupt cessation of the whirl of his life, there had come to him a feeling, vague, indefinite, of futility—a discouragement. All of his fighting, all of his defiance, his cunning had after all led him only to this—to a cell. For the last six years he should have been expecting this. But really, he had not expected it. It had come to him as a distinct shock. And now came this feeling of uselessness, of futility.
He had fought society and had been worsted. And he felt that always he would be worsted. He felt that he could not go on in this way. It didn’t pay, that was it. Always, he would get the worst of it. It didn’t pay. He couldn’t fight the world. He couldn’t fight that. His life—it had been a failure. That was it: his life had been a failure.
It had been a failure. And in him, now, obscure but strong, there was a longing for something else, for some elusive thing that he could not name, that he could not picture, and yet which was indispensable to him.
Strangely enough, it was allied in some way
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