Page:Lynch Williams--The stolen story and other newspaper stories.djvu/292

 and they both went back to their daily work in the noisy vortex of the city.

Billy, in a quiet place in the good, green country, experienced regular meals, regular hours, and normal nights' sleep for the first time in years. And for the first time in years he had a perspective view of Newspaper Row and himself. They made him take long walks through the quiet country, and he saw, as plainly as his friends, the inevitable conclusion of his story—unless he took himself sharply in hand, without any more delay.

As he began regaining his physical exuberance he began telling himself what he had never acknowledged to anyone before—that he could have stopped all along if he only wanted to—the trouble had been to want to. He used to tell his friends, with tears in his eyes, "What makes it so hard is that, no matter how hard I fight, there is always the absolute certainty of failure in the end, sooner or later." But he now believed that he could have kept from it all the while, just as he could have held back his spectacular tears, if he had only made