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138 like that with impunity, for years on end; but even at that time he had often suffered from sudden fits of depression, a secret, silent hopelessness, when everything seemed to be going black before him with needless, useless, menacing gloom. None of his fellow-officers saw it; none of his brothers or sisters. If he put in an appearance on one of those days, he was the same blunt, jovial soldier, the fair-haired, burly giant, rough and noisy, with the mock fierceness in his voice and the love of women in his brown, questing eyes, that went up and down, doing their appraising in a moment. But, secretly, there was within him so great a discontent with himself, that, as soon as he was alone, he would think:

"O God, what a rotten, filthy life! . . ."

Then he would fling himself on a couch, under his sword-rack, and wonder whether it was because he had drunk champagne yesterday, or because of something else. . . something else. . . a strong feeling of discontent. He did not know, but he made up his mind on one point, that he must knock off champagne: the damned fizzy stuff didn't suit him and he wouldn't drink it again. Indeed, he wouldn't drink much at all: no beer, no cocktails, for it all flew straight to his temples, like a wave of blood, and throbbed there, madly. And so it came to a secret abstemiousness, of which he never spoke and which he calculated so cunningly that his friends, though they knew that he was no great drinker, did