and then dropped down again on the sofa

He took up the letter and read it over. He knew the man who wrote--no sentimentalist seeking emotional variety from vague philanthropic experiments, but a serious student of social conditions, now unexpectedly provided with the opportunity to apply his ideas. Yes, it was Duplain's chance--if indeed it might not be his own!... Amherst sat upright, dazzled by the thought. Why Duplain--why not himself? Bessy had spoken the illuminating word--what he wanted was to get away--to get away at any cost! Escape had become his one thought: escape from the bondage of Lynbrook, from the bitter memory of his failure at Westmore; and here was the chance to escape back into life--into independence, activity and usefulness! Every atrophied faculty in him suddenly started from its torpor, and his brain throbbed with the pain of the awakening.... The servant came to tell him that his horse waited, and he sprang up, took his riding-whip from the rack, stared a moment, absently, after the man's retreating back, and then dropped down again on the sofa.... What was there to keep him from accepting? His wife's affection was dead--if her sentimental fancy for him had ever deserved the name! And his passing mastery over her was gone too--he smiled to remember that, hardly two hours earlier, he had been fatuous enough to think he could still regain it! Now he said to himself that she would sooner desert a friend to please him than sacrifice a fraction of her income; and the discovery cast a stain of sordidness on their whole relation. He could still imagine struggling to win her back from another man, or even to save her from some folly into which mistaken judgment or perverted enthusiasm might have hurried her; but to go on battling against the dull unimaginative subservience to personal luxury--the slavery to houses and servants and clothes--ah, no, while he had any fight left in him it was worth spending in a better cause than that! Through the open window he could hear, in the mild December stillness, his horse's feet coming and going on the gravel. _Her_ horse, led up and down by _her_ servant, at the door of _her_ house!... The sound symbolized his whole future...the situation his marriage had made for him, and to which he must henceforth bend, unless he broke with it then and there.... He tried to look ahead, to follow up, one by one, the consequences of such a break. That it would be final he had no doubt.