The Protestant Flagellant, who whipped his soul rather than his body, who made self-denial the rack and the boot, who believed that on Sunday it was sacrilegious to smile, blasphemous to laugh! Spurlock had gone back spiritually three hundred years.

In the matter of his conscience he was primitive; and for an educated man to become primitive is to become something of a child.
From midnight until morning he was now left alone.

He had sufficient strength to wait upon himself.

During the previous night he had been restless; and in the lonely dragging hours his thoughts had raced in an endless circle--action without progress.

He was reaching wearily for some kind of buffer to his harrying conscience.