But he found it did make a difference, a profoundly disturbing
difference. He had grown insulated against the memory of Sophie Carr
tugging at his heartstrings as the magnetic north pulls on the compass
needle. He had grown free of both thought and hope of her. There had
been too many other vital things pressing upon him these months of
adventure in toil, too many undeniable, everyday factors of living
present at every turn, hourly insistent upon being coped with, for him
to nurse old sad dreams and longings. So he had come at last to think of
that passionate yearning as a disease which had run its course.
Now, to his dismay, it recurred in all its old virulence, at a mere
glimpse of Sophie. The floodgates of memory loosed bitter waters upon
him, to make his heart heavy and spoil his days of passive content. It
angered him to be so hopelessly troubled. But he could not gainsay the
fact.
It made San Francisco a dreary waste. Try as he would he could not keep
Sophie Carr from being the sun around which the lesser nebulæ of his
thought continually revolved. He could no more help a wistful lookout
for her upon San Francisco's streets than he could help breathing. Upon
the rolling phalanxes of motor cars his gaze would turn with watchful
expectation, and he took to scanning the faces of the passing thousands,
a lonely, shy man with a queer glow in his eyes. That, of course, was
only in moments of forgetfulness. Then he would pull himself together
with a resentful irritation and tax himself with being a weak fool and
stalk along about his business.
But his business had lost its savor, just as his soul had lost its
slowly-won serenity. His business had no importance to any save himself.
It had been merely to winter decently and economically with an eye
cocked for such opportunities of self-betterment as came his way, and
failing material opportunity in this Bagdad of the Pacific coast to make
the most of his enforced idleness.
And now the magic of the colorful city had departed along with the magic
of the books. The downtown streets ceased to be a wonderful human
panorama which he loved to watch. The hushed reading room where he had
passed so many contented hours was haunted by a presence that obscured
the printed page. He would find himself staring absently at an open
book, the words blurred and overlaid with mental pictures of Lone Moose,
of Sophie sitting on the creek bank, of his unfinished church, forlorn
and gaunt in the winter snows and the summer silences, of Tommy Ashe
trudging across the meadow, gun in hand, of old Sam Carr in his
moosehide chair, of the Indians, the forest, of all that goes to make
the northern wilderness--and of himself moving through it all, an
unheroic figure, a man who had failed in his work, in his love, in
everything.