The Will and the Way by Bernard Capes — Read

For, a day or two, in the reaction following that night of poignant experience, Le Strang went about his business in a state of moody, and rather savage, depression. He sorrowed over his little comrade, so untimely called away; he rebelled against his own emotional surrender to a passion which, humiliating in itself to one of his strongly independent character, had the further disadvantage of hindering his hands in the unravelling of that problem he had set himself to solve; he felt that he had been unfairly trapped by sentiment into a collusion with the powers of evil.

It is a fact, if a rare fact, that men who have cherished their freedom into maturity, will sometimes, when betrayed by circumstance into surrendering it, evade the astounding responsibility so incredibly undertaken by them, by, severing their jugular arteries. Le Strang, needless to say, was no white-liver of that order; but he found himself none the less distressed by many, and unreasoning qualms. There was still enough of the dreamer in him occasionally to demoralise the worldly side; and it was the practical difficulties of that duplicated existence which would sometimes frighten him vaguely in the prospect.