He did not only want to believe Edward, he had to believe him; if he went to California, he would be leaving behind his home and his grandfather, but might he not also be leaving behind his sickness, his past, his mortifications? His history, so entangled with New York itself that every block he walked was the scene of some past embarrassment?: Could it not be draped in a sheet and hung in the back of his closet like his winter coat? What was life worth if he might not have his chance, slim as it might be, of feeling that it was truly his, his to make or destroy, his to mold like clay or
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