One of his lungs began to heal, the other promised to
follow its example, and he was assured he might outweather a dozen
winters if he would betake himself to those climates in which
consumptives chiefly congregate. As he had grown extremely fond of
London, he cursed the flatness of exile: but at the same time that
he cursed he conformed, and gradually, when he found his sensitive
organ grateful even for grim favours, he conferred them with a lighter
hand. He wintered abroad, as the phrase is; basked in the sun, stopped
at home when the wind blew, went to bed when it rained, and once or
twice, when it had snowed overnight, almost never got up again.
A secret hoard of indifference- like a thick cake a fond old nurse
might have slipped into his first school outfit- came to his aid and
helped to reconcile him to sacrifice; since at the best he was too ill
for aught but that arduous game. As he said to himself, there was
really nothing he had wanted very much to do, so that he had at
least not renounced the field of valour. At present, however, the
fragrance of forbidden fruit seemed occasionally to float past him and
remind him that the finest of pleasures is the rush of action.
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