Though it was inevitable, we
felt a shock of sorrow, and a silence fell upon us. Only that
scamp of a Perkins Brown, chuckling and rubbing his boot, really
rejoiced. I could have kicked him.
"We all went to bed, feeling that the charm of our Arcadian life
was over. I was so full of the new happiness of love that I was
scarcely conscious of regret. I seemed to have leaped at once into
responsible manhood, and a glad rush of courage filled me at the
knowledge that my own heart was a better oracle than those--now so
shamefully overthrown--on whom I had so long implicitly relied. In
the first revulsion of feeling, I was perhaps unjust to my
associates. I see now, more clearly, the causes of those vagaries,
which originated in a genuine aspiration, and failed from an
ignorance of the true nature of Man, quite as much as from the
egotism of the individuals. Other attempts at reorganizing Society
were made about the same time by men of culture and experience, but
in the A. C. we had neither. Our leaders had caught a few half-
truths, which, in their minds, were speedily warped into errors.
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