He
could not sleep nor eat, and went about his duties like one in a dream.
When his struggles against his enemy were fiercest, he kept saying over
her name to himself, as though she could help him. Yet always it was
Sally's hand he held in the darkest hours, in his brutal moments; for in
this fight between appetite and will there are moments when only the
animal seems to exist, and the soul disappears in the glare and gloom of
the primal emotions. Nancy he called his "lucky sixpence," but he called
Sally his "guinea-girl."
From first to last his whimsicality never deserted him. In his worst
hours, some innate optimism and humour held him steady in his fight.
It was not depression that possessed him at the worst, but the violence
of an appetite most like a raging pain which men may endure with a smile
upon their lips. He carried in his face the story of a conflict, the
aftermath of bitter experience; and through all there pulsed the glow of
experience. He had grown handsomer, and the graceful decision of his
figure, the deliberate certainty of every action, heightened the force of
a singular personality.
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