Page:Lynch Williams--The girl and the game.djvu/184

 You see, for twenty years or so he had been a lively, energetic boy with a mind so occupied with external interests, as should be the case with all healthy young organisms, that he had never wasted time over introspection. When he got this attack of ingrowing thoughts he ran against a lot of stuff he had never dreamed of before, and it nearly took his breath away.

And, like many when they first realize some of the gray facts of reality at the bottom roots of living, he began looking for nothing but the gray ones, and, naturally, succeeded in his search. Then he turned, as one will in self-denunciation, for comparison with others, and began to wonder if they were not all wrong and built on selfish principles, too, and found that they were. He was all selfish, and they were all selfish and everything ever done and said and thought in all the world was reducible to selfish motives. This school-girl morbidness Elliot thought an original discovery.

Making this discovery occupied the rest of his Junior year. When he came back as a Senior he took to strolling about the