Amongst other distractions which Tom tried at one crisis of his life, was reading. For three or four days running, he really worked hard—very hard, if we were to reckon by the number of hours he spent in his own rooms over his books with his oak sported—hard, even though we should only reckon by results. For, though scarcely an hour passed that he was not balancing on the hind legs of his chair with a vacant look in his eyes, and thinking of anything but Greek roots or Latin constructions, yet on the whole he managed to get through a good deal, and one evening, for the first time since his quarrel with Hardy, felt a sensation of real comfort—it hardly amounted to pleasure—as he closed his Sophocles some hour or so after hall, having just finished the last of the Greek plays which he meant to take in for his first examination. He leaned back in his chair and sat for a few minutes, letting his thoughts follow their own bent. They soon took to going wrong, and he jumped up in fear lest he should be drifting back[210] into the black stormy sea, in the trough of which he had been laboring so lately, and which he felt he was by no means clear of yet. At first he caught up his cap and gown as though he were going out. There was a wine party at one of his acquaintance’s rooms; or, he could go and smoke a cigar in the pool-room, or at any one of the dozen other places. On second thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back on to the sofa, and went to his bookcase. The reading had paid so well that evening that he resolved to go on with it. He had no particular object in selecting one book more than another, and so took down carelessly the first that came to hand.

It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord in the “Apology.” He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of memories they called up! This was almost the last book he had read at school; and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved library stood out before him at once. Then the blunders that he himself and others had made rushed through his mind, and he almost burst into a laugh as he wheeled his chair round to the window, and began reading where he had opened, encouraging every thought of the old times when he first read that marvellous defence, and throwing himself back into them with all his might. And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The great truth which he had been led to the[211] brink of in those early days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him. He leant back in his chair, ............