but as he looked at the photograph his eyes moved from the face to the black background behind it , and suddenly before him came a picture of the parties of his early days here , of the writer in his cups who had been the diamond to all their costume jewelry , the noble tragedy disappearing into his own vortex of despair , and he wanted none of it , none of the glory of protracted misery , none of the drowning in the eddies of the great vessels , the downward spiral in the expanding wake of the vessels of excess .