"Ah, yes," Cardington returned, with a comprehending look in his eyes, "but I 'm afraid you had too good a time down there in New York, and that now you 're working too hard by way of penance. But in regard to your suggestion, I am inclined to think favourably of it. Not that the President per se is an object of great interest to me. His mental processes are tolerably familiar, and I don't feel particularly in need of instruction concerning my duty toward God and my duty toward my neighbour. Still, this is an occasion of more than usual interest, as perhaps you are aware."

A change had come into the relationship of these two, or rather a readjustment of the view of the younger man concerning the older, dating from the time when Cardington had disposed so neatly of his tentative wish to accompany him to Bermuda. He had returned from the South alone about a fortnight before, quite uncommunicative in regard to his trip, merely saying that the Wycliffes would come by a later boat. The shadow of the woman in the case was undoubtedly between them, and yet it could not be said that jealousy, in the ordinary sense of the word, was operative as an estranging element. Leigh had too much reason to know that neither of them had much chance of winning her, and he thought he divined in Cardington not so much a lover's interest as a friend's deep concern on her behalf and an unwillingness to mention her name in casual conversation.

Upon the present occasion Leigh was impressed with his air of subdued excitement, with a hint of tension and expectancy, as if something untoward were about to happen; and as they took their way toward the city together, the reason of this mood became apparent.

"Now, you know," he began, "great things were happening this afternoon, and as I sometimes like to view history in the making, I went out to see what I could see. I 'm afraid that our respected mayor is destined to play a very inconspicuous role in this evening's entertainment. If I am correctly informed, he is not to have a speaking part. As an accidental mayor, pitchforked into his present position by Fortune in one of her ironical moods, he is to be allowed merely a seat on the platform, where he may be seen but not heard. But to go back to the beginning. When it was learned that the President of the United States intended to honour us with a visit and to stand and deliver a speech, it occurred to a group of representative citizens that a professional baseball player and street-car conductor was scarcely a fit person to receive so distinguished a guest; so they very properly resolved that his part in the exercises should be reduced to a minimum. To that end a committee, including among others Mr. Bradford, Mr. Parr, and our worthy alumnus, Mr. Cobbens, wrote a letter to Emmet in which they suggested that his speech of welcome at the station be limited to three, or at the most to five, minutes. They intimated also that after the speech of welcome was concluded, Mr. Emmet need not concern himself further in the entertainment of the President."

"I call that beastly snobbishness," said Leigh indignantly. "Whatever the man's former position may have been, he is now the mayor and entitled to all the honours of his office. On the same principle, the swells of forty years ago might have refused to recognise Lincoln as the President because he once split rails. And in fact they practically did. He had to be dead before they began to think that his rise in the world was a vindication of the equality of opportunity they pretended to believe in."

"'Beastly' is perhaps the proper adjective under the circumstances," the other admitted, "but why should we lose sleep and shorten our days with fruitless indignation because men of a certain kind act as men of that kind always have acted? I prefer to look at the dramatic and humorous side of it, having, perhaps unfortunately, reached the speculative and acquiescent time of life. And the situation at the station was not without its amusing aspect. Mr. Emmet's well-known oratorical powers being thus curtailed, the President was delayed but a few minutes and then conducted to a carriage and driven about the city, attended by the honourable trio before mentioned. It is said by those who were within earshot that the President inquired for his friend the mayor, when he saw that he was to be deprived of his company. However that may be, I myself saw our tribune of the people riding by himself in solitary grandeur in the third carriage."

At the memory of Emmet's discomfiture he interrupted his story to indulge in one of his silent laughs, an expression of mirth which, to his listener's excited mind, seemed almost an inhuman exhibition of his professed detachment from the passions about him. Perhaps, had he seen the dapper Cobbens and the lethargic Parr escorting the unsuspicious President to the carriage, and Emmet's expression as he found himself shoved into the third place in the procession, he might have appreciated his companion's sense of the ridiculous. But it was the inward struggle, not the outward aspect, that stirred his emotions. Emmet's most bitter strictures upon Cobbens and his kind were justified by this incident, and he imagined the mayor's sensations when he found himself out-generalled and humiliated. What would Felicity have felt, had she been present to witness the scene? How it might have affected her toward her husband, whether it would have aroused her to champion him the more, or whether it would have moved her to scorn of his stupidity in allowing himself to be put aside, Leigh could only guess; but his own instinct was to make common cause with the man that was wronged.

"And who appointed the committee," he inquired, "if Emmet had nothing to do with it?"

"Why, they appointed themselves, without any more regard for the mayor than if he had been a professor in St. George's Hall. Now perhaps you begin to appreciate why I remarked that this was an occasion of more than ordinary interest. Can we doubt that word has gone round among the proletariat that their mayor has been insulted, and can we doubt that they will be at the opera house in full force to express their opinion of the committee? You see now my motive in coming. I am like the man that went to the animal show in the hope of seeing the lion eat the trainer. In other words, if the people are going to give us a specimen of the psychology of the mob, I wish to be there to enjoy it. Such a thing might help one to an appreciation of certain incidents in Roman history, like the turmoils in the time of the Gracchi, and the scene in the forum when Mark Antony played on the heartstrings of the populace. Everything is grist that comes to our mill. Even a football game is a modern rendition of a gladiatorial combat. Don't you think so?"

When they reached the edge of the great throng that already filled the street in front of the opera house, Cardington, instead of plunging into it as his companion had anticipated, turned down an alley, like one familiar with the locality, and led the way to the stage door. The manoeuvre disclosed to Leigh the fact that his colleague had intended all the time to come, and also his own good fortune in obtaining such a guide.

"Pass right in, professor," one of the guard said, as soon as he caught sight of Cardington's tall figure. "A friend of yours? All right. Sergeant, these are two friends of mine."

They made their way behind the scenes and came down into the pit, where a few people, similarly favoured, were slowly selecting their seats.

"What kind of a pull have you got with these fellows?" Leigh asked, secretly amused at the surprise his companion had reserved for him.

"A prophet is not always without honour, even in his own country," Cardington returned evasively.

Apparently his vein of talk was worked out to the end, for he fell into a profound silence as soon as he had taken his seat, his arms folded and his head bent forward, like one oblivious of his surroundings.

Leigh, not sorry to be left to his own thoughts and observations, listened to the roar of the increasing multitude in the corridor without. He was struck by an absence of that good humour which usually characterises such a gathering. From time to time the doors creaked and bulged inward as the people surged against them, clamouring menacingly for admittance. Each repetition of the forward movement was followed by an accentuated babel of voices: women screaming that they were being crushed and shrilly demanding more room, men protesting that they themselves were powerless to resist the pressure from behind. It was evident that Cardington had not miscalculated their animus, for they hurled maledictions at the janitor, who stood waiting within, his watch in his hand, wavering between fear for the stability of the bolts and an unwillingness to disobey orders. Those already admitted listened with increasing uneasiness, momentarily anticipating that the doors would give way with a crash, and that they might see men and women trampled under foot in an irresistible stampede.

Every electric light in the place was now turned on, disclosing the bare tiers of seats, the stage filled with chairs, the great flags looped on either side of the national shield, the speaker's table surmounted by a glass and pitcher. Then the scene changed. The janitor, struggling to open the doors, was thrown violently aside as they swung back and launched the mob into the hall. A great roar ascended to the roof; the nearer seats were submerged by the black mass, which sent out thin streams between the rows, like an advancing tide creeping shoreward between ledges of rock. Leigh and Cardington rose to their feet and stood gazing at the spectacle. For the most part the crowd was composed of labouring men, who looked as if they had just come from the factory or the shop, but here and there could be seen a glimpse of bright ribbon, or a feather, or the silk hat of a pale-faced clerk. So rapid was the movement that the two spectators were forced to resume their seats in a few minutes to forestall their seizure.

It was eight o'clock, the time set for the appearance of the President, when Mayor Emmet came from one of the wings, entirely alone, and took a chair near the centre of the stage. He had not been invited to meet the President at dinner, and while the great man and his entertainers lingered over their cigars, the mayor appeared promptly in the opera house, as if keeping a business engagement. No one who listened to the welcome he received could doubt his personal popularity or the intensity with which his constituents resented the slight he had endured. At first he sat facing the tumult imperturbably, and then a smile slowly mounted to his eyes, as he rose and bowed his acknowledgements. Demands for a speech were shot out at him from various parts of the pit, but he merely shook his head and indicated his refusal by a familiar yet graceful gesture.

Cardington sat gazing at the solitary figure, muttering half inarticulate strictures upon the demagogical spirit that had led the man to make such an open bid for sympathy and vindication, but his companion experienced very different emotions. There sat Felicity's husband, handsome, self-contained, and effective. With a rueful appreciation of a type that differed so much from his own, the astronomer wondered whether she could resist him now, were she there to witness his triumph. The difference in social station between her and her husband seemed unimportant now. What he lacked was easy to acquire compared with what he had already won; and his weakness for Lena Harpster was, after all, much less serious than the moral delinquencies of the men of Felicity's own class. For Warwick, like all rich cities, was honeycombed with social scandals, and scarcely one of Emmet's opponents would have been justified, if all were published, in casting the first stone at him. Surely, Leigh reflected, she must know these facts, for even he, a comparative stranger, had heard of them.

Was her pride so exacting that she demanded perfection in return for her condescension? Would she make no allowances whatever? It seemed to Leigh that such an attitude on her part would be inhuman. During his visit to New York he had recovered his grip upon himself, for he was not one to throw away his days like the petals of a discarded flower because he had failed to win the woman he loved. Love, he reminded himself bitterly, was not the main business of life. This mood of renunciation gave him an almost impersonal appreciation of his successful rival; but the tribute left him heartsick. Like all personally ambitious men who have failed of popular applause, the success of another filled him with momentary self-depreciation. To be sure, this popular triumph of Emmet was fleeting and local, while he himself meant yet to win a permanent, though restricted, fame. Of this he had no doubt. The present scene stirred him to grim emulation. To-morrow he would realise that shouting and the clapping of hands are as transient as the wind in the trees; but to-night they were, after all, something well worth winning.

Presently, as if a play previously rehearsed were being acted before the eyes of the audience, the "prominent representatives" of the city and state began to swarm out from the wings and fill the chairs. Senators, judges, millionaires, popular preachers, all sunk to the dead level of a supporting chorus, an impressive illustration of the littleness of the locally great. To all those thousands of intent eyes these were merely the background upon which, in another moment, was to be projected the one figure of national importance.

And now he was standing before them, instantly recognisable, though his appearance magically bettered expectation. The committee, virtuously true to the course of action they had planned, had passed Emmet by without a look, but the people surged to their feet and cheered, as they saw the President pause and take their mayor by the hand. The two stood in front of the passing chorus, apparently chatting like old friends, and as the audience caught sight of the President's famous smile, they laughed aloud. Even those who might later call the President's action shrewd politics now felt that it was dictated by unaffected humanity, and their carefully nursed attitude of criticism melted for the time in the warmth of that solvent personality.

As the confusion began to subside, while the observed and the observers resumed their seats, Leigh suddenly saw Bishop Wycliffe sitting beside the local bishop of the Roman Catholic Church. The proximity of the two men, the easy courtesy of their manner as they exchanged a whispered remark and turned again to glance at the President, stirred Cardington to comment.

"That's a touching picture of Christian charity," he murmured, with a gleam of amusement in his eyes, "our Anglican and Latin ecclesiastical princes side by side, forgetful of the Eve of St. Bartholomew and of Henry VIII. I have n't the slightest doubt that they are more conscious at this moment of those very things and of their respective traditions than of the situation before them."

His companion, looking for the bishop's daughter, scarcely heard what he said. He discovered her in a box at one side of the stage, in the midst of her friends, and was not surprised at the studied unconcern of her manner. She must have come prepared to play her part. It was her beauty only that surprised him. His mental picture of her was pale compared with the glowing reality, for she seemed to have brought with her all the warmth and colour of the south. Though her eyes were turned in Emmet's direction, the casual observer might naturally have supposed that the President, sitting in the same line of vision, was the object of her interest. Only Leigh, glancing from one to the other, saw her falter slightly as she encountered her husband's fixed and meaning look. There was a determination in his aspect that shook ever her fortified resolve. The colour slowly mounted in his face, and his cheek pulsed with emotion. As her gaze fluttered away, he turned himself in his chair with a decisive motion, like one who bides his time, and sat looking upon vacancy. He seemed to forget the scene before him and his own position between the warring forces so dramatically brought together.

The silence of expectancy that had fallen upon the house was pierced by a low hissing sound, for Anthony Cobbens had risen to his feet and advanced to the footlights to make the speech of introduction. As the malignant greeting reached his ears, his face paled and his fingers tightened on the rim of the silk hat which he held awkwardly in the bend of his arm. The scene Cardington had anticipated was about to be enacted. Upon Cobbens, as the mouthpiece of the committee, the fury of the people now turned itself, a fury no less intense because restrained to some extent by the presence of the President. Perhaps the unfortunate spokesman had thought that this presence would save him entirely, for his reception seemed to turn him to stone. As he waited for the hissing to subside, he presented an appearance at once so grotesque and pitiful that his bitterest enemy must needs have felt some twinges of compassion. That tight-waisted and wide-skirted coat, those faultless trousers, served only to give a waspish effect, and to emphasize the insignificance of the figure they were meant to dignify. He wore a solitary pink carnation, selected with solicitous care. His thin face seemed to shrivel under the fierce rays of scorn concentrating from thousands of eyes, and his large, bald crown began to glisten with slow drops of sweat. Even his voice, when he was permitted to speak, had lost its timbre and suggested the voice of a somnambulist.

It was evident that he had prepared a long and elaborate address, for presently in the monotonous mumble of his words familiar phrases began to reach the ears of those who listened,—"when police commissioner of New York"—"the Rough riders"—"San Juan Hill,"—but for once their conjuring power was gone, and they were greeted in silence or drowned in mocking catcalls. Not one in ten of his audience knew or cared what he was saying; not one in a thousand was moved to pity for his plight. The people had been visited with scorn that day through an insult to their elected representative, and now they paid it back with interest. The lion was eating his trainer, and licking his chops with grim satisfaction. The spirit was that of class against class, bitter, ugly, and revengeful.

Leigh's personal interest was supplemented by the curiosity of a comparative stranger, who drinks in every detail of a situation typical of the country in which he has come to dwell. He studied the various faces on the platform attentively, and wondered whether Judge Swigart were now convinced of the existence of the class feeling which he had so blandly belittled in the joint debate; but the defeated candidate, like the majority of his companions, had assumed a studied and enigmatic expression. So great was the tension that no one ventured to look at his neighbour. In a way they were all sharers in the humiliation of Cobbens, and co-recipients of the people's scorn. He saw Felicity and Mrs. Parr putting their heads together in whispered comment. The bishop stirred uneasily and glanced with irritation at the speaker's back, as if he would fain have bid him make an end. In a moment of pardonable weakness the mayor's lips parted in the briefest of smiles. Then he took out his handkerchief to conceal his emotion, and having propped his chin upon the palm of his hand, he gazed abstractedly at the floor.

The President, twitching in his chair, appeared well-nigh unable to control his nervousness. He grasped the arms of his seat convulsively, he polished his glasses, he screwed up his eyes, he smiled, he frowned. Watching him with intense interest, Leigh entirely forgot the speaker. He had not imagined the President's build so powerful. There was a brute strength in the neck and shoulders that would have been no inadequate endowment for a pugilist; yet this suggestion was offset by an expression of which his pictures had given scarcely a hint. It was not difficult to understand how his enthusiastic biographer had been carried away by that probity and sweetness, so that he made both himself and his hero ridiculous and aroused inextinguishable laughter among the arbiters of good taste. The subject was one that tempted men to violent opinions on one side or the other.

Meanwhile the speech continued, but now the listeners began to appreciate a curious change in the temper of the speaker and of his tormentors. At first he had stood before them like one hypnotised, unable to save himself by shortening the oration he had prepared. By little and little, however, the innate power of the man asserted itself, malign and hateful as ever, but no less surely effective. His eyes began to glisten, his voice gained in volume and steadiness. He gradually made himself heard more continuously, until the hissing and catcalls became less frequent, and finally ceased. After a struggle of fifteen minutes, he finished strong. Like some ill-favoured terrier, he had persisted in spite of odds, and had worried his great antagonist into wondering submission.

When his figure disappeared from view, to be replaced by that of the President, his supporters exchanged sidelong glances and meaning smiles. They had chosen their champion well, a nasty fighter, to crack the whip over the class from which he had risen.

It was now that the President increased to passionate devotion the popularity his attitude thus far had won him. As he heard Emmet's name combined with his own in the cheering, his face lightened up with his extraordinary and spontaneous smile. He turned, and pulled Emmet to his feet beside him; then he sat down and looked on with keen enjoyment while the mayor bowed his thanks. It was some time before the demonstration ceased and the people, satisfied and vindicated, settled down to listen.

But the President evidently had a score of his own to settle, and a snub to administer. He turned to the senior Senator who sat at the far left of the stage and thanked him for his welcome to the State; then he turned to Mayor Emmet and thanked him for his welcome to the city. There was not one word of reply to the ill-starred Cobbens, not one syllable in appreciation of the efforts of the committee. He had taken his manuscript from his pocket and laid it on the table before the full meaning of this omission dawned upon the audience, and then they broke loose with an animus which made their previous demonstrations seem comparatively mild. The President gathered his manuscript together, raised his hand for silence, and began to read.

His speech was simple in content and devoid of imaginative passages; his delivery was conspicuously defective; his voice, uneven in quality, now low, now breaking into a shrill note, seemed to come forth only at the bidding of a tremendous will. Every word appeared to necessitate an effort and to be ground out between clenched teeth. Yet his listeners hung on every word with breathless attention. His smile broke forth, and they found it irresistible; he grew serious, and they reflected his mood; he made a patriotic appeal, and the response was instant. Without any of the arts of the orator, he swayed them as he would. It was the triumph of personality over art. The ugly memories of the recent scene faded away; local struggles were forgotten; Emmet and Cobbens receded equally into the background, and only the country's glory and interests filled the minds of the listeners.

During all this time the bishop's daughter sat as one rapt in a reverie that had little connection with the emotions that swayed the crowded house before her. Emmet made no further attempt to look at her, and to do so would have necessitated a conspicuous movement and turning; but the young mathematician gazed in her direction from time to time, wondering at the nature of her thoughts, and hoping that their eyes might meet. As often before, he noted that her expression in repose suggested a profound sadness, as if her beauty had brought its heritage of unrest. There is a type of beauty that suggests a setting of fashion and clothes and jewelry; but Felicity's loveliness was of the twilight kind, far removed from realism, setting the imagination free with fancies of the mountains and the woods. To the man who loved her and had seen her in just such a setting, the appeal was all the more powerful. Even now the shadows of the trees seemed to lurk in her eyes, in her hair, and in the exquisite curve of her lips. It was difficult for him to realise that she was a fashionable woman, loving the opportunities of her social life, for he saw her otherwise. Hers was a face toward which men gravitated, not drawn by her beauty alone, nor by the brilliancy of her mind, but by a sense of mystery beyond the outward seeming.

The atmosphere which the President's speech had created outlasted the effort itself, and remained warmly in the minds of the hearers. All too soon they were reaching for their hats and coats and beginning to realise that the great occasion was over. Soon the stage was bare, and the receding tide in the pit had left large patches of empty seats.

The experience had wrought a wonderful transformation in Leigh. Emmet's initial triumph and his claims were now forgotten. Had the mayor been allowed to speak, he would doubtless have scored a hit, but Cobbens had succeeded in reducing him to a mere pawn. The people had thrust him forward on the board; Cobbens had neatly lifted him off and usurped his square. The mayor's position had been far from heroic, battered between contending forces and finally rescued by the President's strong arm. Doubtless Cobbens had killed himself politically, but he had won a certain kind of victory. Emmet was already beaten when he failed to grasp the opportunity the President's visit presented and allowed the committee to thrust him aside. No amount of subsequent championing could restore him to a position of dignity. His enemies had decided that he must not be allowed to introduce the President, for they knew he would do it well. They had brought the fury of the people down upon their heads, but they had exhibited their chosen representative before them in a mute and inglorious role. They had even succeeded in making him an object of pity. The damage he had received in the imagination of his supporters was incalculable, and while they burned with indignation, they instinctively paid a treacherous tribute to Cobbens's amazing cleverness and audacity.

Though no such tribute was paid the lawyer by Leigh, it was still true that the turn of affairs forced Emmet from his consideration until, instead of a star of the first magnitude, he became a mere point of light, and finally disappeared. During the President's speech, he felt that he had been holding secret communion with Felicity, and the accumulated excitement of the evening worked in his thoughts an unexpected license and daring. It was possible to allow Emmet's claims when he was receiving the homage of the people alone, and she had not yet appeared; but her presence had revived the old passionate torment in his heart. Love returned triumphant, making light of all other claims and considerations.

Upon some natures oratory, the successful swaying of the crowd, has the same effect, irrespective of the tone and content of the speech, that is produced by the harmony of a great orchestra, an effect of exaltation and lawlessness. In the young mathematician this responsiveness was a marked trait, at variance with another more coldly intellectual quality. He began to feel that he ranged at will, freed from artificial and unreal restraints. He, too, would do some great thing. On that full wave of excitement he was carried beyond the dikes which in cooler moments he had erected against himself.

When the audience arose to depart, he looked longingly in the direction of the box in which Felicity sat. He would fain have leaped upon the stage and have gone to her before she could escape him; he was burning to speak to her, to hear her voice and touch her hand. But her departure with her friends was little less than precipitate. It did not now occur to her lover that she might wish to avoid her husband; as far as he was concerned, she had no husband. He only appreciated his own disappointment, and stood chafing before the stupid herd that blocked his way to the street.

In this mood he cared not at all to discuss the events of the evening with his companion; but Cardington was full of caustic comment.

"It was a great occasion," he mused. "We have seen what we came out to see, and what more have we a right to demand? The dear people rampant, the respected mayor quiescent, but biding his time, Cobbens couchant but fanged, the President raised to a sublime apotheosis. It is always a pleasure—is it not?—to witness transcendent ability, even if it be in the line of practical politics. The perfection of each thing is worth observing. These local politicians are fools compared with the President, mere blundering tyros in the hands of a master of the craft." His eyes began to gleam with merriment. "And, by the way, that was a noble effort of Mr. Cobbens, 'apples of gold in pitchers of silver.'"

His soliloquy lasted unbroken until they reached the street. To his companion there was now no inspiration in the moonlight, no sweetness in the unusual mildness of the air. His restless eyes searched in vain the long line of carriages, but Felicity was nowhere to be seen. He caught sight of the bishop driving off alone, and Cardington noticed the direction of his glance.

"Ah," he said, "the bishop is doubtless about to betake himself to the final reception to the President at the Warwick Club. Which reminds me that the Bradford House is only a short walk from here."



CHAPTER XV

"I PLUCKED THE ROSE, IMPATIENT OF DELAY"

The Bradford House was a famous hostelry, and had long been deservedly popular for its cuisine. It was a pleasure to sit in the long, low cafe, to observe the rafters of natural wood, the antique fireplace, and the mural paintings illustrating scenes from Colonial history: the landing at Plymouth Rock, the death of Miantonomoh, the Boston Tea Party. Still more pleasant it was, while the colonists attacked the Pequods on the wall, to attack a lobster salad or a welsh rabbit on the table, and to reflect that the main business of men fruges consumere nati was no longer to fight Indians.

Some such comforting reflection seemed to be mirrored in the genial countenance of Professor Littleford, as he sat with Miss Wycliffe and the Parrs in a corner, listening to the music that floated in from the room beyond, and viewing the scene through the smoke of his cigarette.

He and Miss Wycliffe had a full view of the room, to which the Parrs had shown their indifference by turning their backs, Mrs. Parr being absorbed in her own excited comments upon the scene in the opera house, while her husband was earnestly employed in the business which had brought him to that place. In fact, he had pleasantly occupied the major time of the President's speech in gustatory anticipations that were now being realised to his perfect satisfaction; and if he thought of the mayor at all, it was to reflect that Emmets could come and go without changing the flavour of his favourite viands.

"It was fortunate," Littleford remarked, "that I telephoned over and reserved this table, but I 'm afraid our friends have disappointed us."

He glanced uneasily at the chairs leaning one against each end of the table, and then over the room. In all that crowd of eager talkers there was practically but one theme of conversation, the recent scene in the opera house, and but one verdict, praise of the committee. In obscure saloons the same topic was bandied back and forth over bars dripping with beer, but there the verdict went the other way. Could all the excited comment on this subject, all the oaths and laughter, have been collected into one volume of sound, what a mighty roar would have ascended, shattering the far quiet of the moonlit night!

As Littleford looked across the room, three men entered the door and began to make their way between the tables in his direction. The first was Cobbens, his hat in the bend of his arm, as if it had rested there continuously since his performance on the platform. He was acutely conscious of the interest his appearance aroused, and bowed from left to right with his nervous, expansive smile, a Gallic personality in manner and dress. It was evident that he felt himself among friends, and regarded his entrance as something of a triumphal progress. To him social Warwick was the world, and its approval was commendation enough, in spite of the President's rebuke. He by no means estimated at its full value the hatred he had won from the masses, and to see him now, a pleased and genial person, the fact was hard to realise. His companions, or rather, the men who followed in his wake, were Cardington and Leigh. They had left their hats and coats in the check-room, and were following the lawyer's lead instinctively, as men will in the mazes of a crowded place. At the same moment Littleford held up his hand and the bishop's daughter indicated her presence and her welcome by a beckoning motion of her napkin. All three men saw the signal and accepted it.

Littleford's brow clouded slightly at sight of Leigh, and his greeting of the young man was a shade less cordial than his greeting of the other two. There were three men and two chairs, which was awkward, and he was expecting only Swigart and Cobbens. Cardington was always welcome, but the astronomer was still an outsider, and the present excitement was one of peculiarly local interest. Had Leigh been a man of means, Littleford would have commanded the waiter to find another chair somewhere, even at the risk of being obliged to compress his ample form against the wall; but now he retained his seat in deliberate helplessness, hoping that the situation would presently be adjusted by the tactful withdrawal of the only supernumerary of the party. Unhappily for this hope, the supernumerary was not disposed to regard himself as such. He may have known that Cobbens would have left his hat outside had he intended to remain, but at all events, it needed only Miss Wycliffe's smile of welcome to justify him in taking the chair beside her.

Her acknowledgement of the lawyer's greeting was brief and perfunctory, as if she forgot to masque her indifference; and just as unconsciously she betrayed her partiality for the young astronomer by those minute signals which a woman displays when off her guard. She swayed toward him almost imperceptibly, and looked at him with content, as a woman looks at the man she loves before she realises more than her desire to have him near.

Cobbens began to apologise for himself and the judge. "I forgot that of course we were expected at the club, when I promised to meet you here; but it seems we are still on dress parade."

"Let me congratulate you," Mrs. Parr interposed, "for putting that creature in his place."

"It was neat," Littleford commented, with appreciation.

Felicity glanced up from her conversation with Leigh to meet an unmistakable desire for her judgment in the lawyer's eyes. The winning prettiness of her manner, the transient glow, were gone in an instant, to be replaced by an expression almost stony in its unhappiness.

"Something had to be done," Cobbens observed modestly, "to maintain the dignity of the city."

The moment was epic in its possibilities, to two of the men present. Cobbens might interpret an expression of approval on her part as a sign that she forgave him for humiliating her protege and had outgrown her fancy, but to Leigh such an expression would mean infinitely more. Thus they waited, each hoping for the significant and illuminating word. But none was given. At the lawyer's mention of dignity in connection with himself, a slight smile hovered about the corners of her lips, but it found no reflection in the cold brightness of her eyes. She made as if she failed to realise that a comment was expected, or as if the subject were not of sufficient interest to move her to speak. The hiatus was closed before its existence could be felt, except by the three so vitally concerned.

"I did think," Littleford explained, "that it would be pleasanter here because of the jam at the club. That's why I proposed that you and Swigart slip away."

The lawyer, perhaps not yet convinced that he had played and lost, now addressed Felicity directly. "Won't you come to the reception with Mr. Littleford and me, Miss Wycliffe? I brought my machine around for the express purpose of carrying you off."

"I 'm too comfortable to move now," she answered coolly, "and I don't propose to make the President shake hands with me twice in one day. Besides, I want to have a little chat with Mr. Leigh. We have n't met for ages. Mr. Littleford, I know you want to go,"—

"I deny it," he interposed gallantly.

—"and as I refuse to move, I don't see why my stubbornness should keep you away from something more interesting."

"In other words," Cobbens said, with as good a grace as his disappointment would allow, "we have received our conge, and had better not stand upon the order of our going."

She greeted this declaration with laughing protest, but the two went off together, Littleford being eager to get from one of the participants the inside history of the scene he had witnessed, and Cobbens well aware that to remain would be to subject himself gratuitously to the humiliation of taking a second place in her attention.

Leigh, exhilarated by his good fortune, was impervious to the keen, malicious glance the lawyer had bestowed upon him, while Cardington, who had stood by during the whole colloquy in perfect silence, did not even now venture to seat himself, but looked down upon Felicity with the mute reproach of one neglected.

"Mr. Cardington," she said gaily, "don't stand there like a clock-tower, without striking a note, but take Mr. Littleford's place here by me."

He did as she commanded, and having given his order, he took out a cigarette and puffed meditatively.

"Now please don't fall into the doleful doldrums," she protested, "when we 've had such an enlivening evening."

"A most effective alliteration," he murmured, but without spontaneity. It was evident that the doldrums were very real with him, for he made no effort to take part in the ensuing conversation, in spite of the fact that the subject was one which might have aroused him to his best endeavours.

Felicity's mood was a revelation to Leigh, though he could not fail to divine its cause, and to guess the emotions she had undergone. Had her pride led her to defend her husband, or had she been reserved and sad, he would not have been surprised, but her sparkle and gaiety were like the glancing of light on the surface of a rock. She even shared in Mrs. Parr's ecstatic triumph over Emmet and echoed her praise of Cobbens, but with a subtle effect of mockery, so that her friend was presently reduced to a hurt and bewildered silence. In all this Leigh saw the effect of her husband's humiliation upon her, that it had torn from the mayor the last shred of the glamour with which her foolish fancy had once surrounded him. He was moved to speculate upon her probable attitude, had Emmet seized his opportunity and risen adequately to the occasion, but the speculation was fruitless, and the present topic of conversation full of hazard to himself. He was guiltless of the vulgarity of showing an animus against Emmet, guiltless also of the hypocrisy of defending him against his wife; and he embraced the opportunity Mrs. Parr's discomfiture offered of turning the talk to Bermuda.

How much of this psychological drama was visible to Cardington it would be impossible to say, but apparently he was lost to his surroundings, for he allowed the others to thresh out the Emmet incident without the assistance of his own able flail. Not until the conversation turned to Bermuda did he arouse himself from his reverie and take the lead. The topic suggested to his mind the influence of climate upon architecture and the arts, and presently he was exploring distant ramifications of the theme.

"I feel it incumbent upon myself," Cardington said, "to confess that I gave Mr. Emmet my careful consideration this evening, during the moments I could spare from a contemplation of our Chief Executive, and I must say that I found him the more interesting study of the two. I began to demolish my earlier views, or prejudices, and to build up a new opinion of the man. Fairness compels me to admit that I got a different conception of his possibilities. As I sat looking at him, expecting to see every sign of demoralisation in his aspect, I began to perceive that he by no means regarded himself down and out for good, if you will allow the sporting phrase. Mr. Emmet was fooled this time, but he will not be fooled again. I thought I could see that he had learned his lesson well, and if I were Mr. Anthony Cobbens, I should feel the stirring of a very considerable doubt as to the ultimate outcome of the struggle to which he has now committed himself. Perhaps he has provoked a jinnee in that young man which will one day rise up and envelop him in a cloud of political suffocation. Don't you think so, Miss Felicity?"

He looked at her inquiringly, anticipating her acquiescence. In his expression the ideal and impersonal quality that constituted his peculiar charm was now apparent, and suggested an inward exaltation, as if he had gained a victory over himself and had made an honourable amend. Leigh, watching her with tense emotion, saw that she was deeply impressed, and he seemed to read the record of her thoughts in the shadows that came and went within her eyes. She was weighing her husband's qualities and possibilities in the scales of this unexpected opinion, and the decision hung suspended in the balance. As he divined her secret struggle and realised that she might go back to the man who did not love her, who wished to use her for his own advancement, he suffered an agony of jealousy that was well-nigh insupportable.

For a few moments she delayed to answer, toying with her fork in thoughtful abstraction. In fact, her love for the young astronomer beside her was contending with the old desire to control her husband and to make him a figure in the world. In the inmost recesses of her heart she knew that she no longer loved Emmet, and that they could never wholly meet. What she did not, perhaps, so frankly own was the fact that she had found too late the man she could have loved and for whom she should have waited. With him she had common social experiences and religious traditions, and time had taught her the value of these things she had once imagined she despised. But, after all, it was the right man against the wrong man, irrespective of such considerations. Now that Emmet was mayor, she found she did not care; the prize was an apple of Sodom in her hand. He had even lost the picturesqueness which appeared to be his in another sphere, without gaining in compensation the things that were Leigh's by inheritance. The argument went against him now, if that could be called an argument which was only a question of love. She looked up finally with a smile that seemed to indicate indifference, or the weary shelving of a long vexed question.

"Perhaps you are right," she answered. "I 'm sure I don't presume to say."

Cardington rose to his feet abruptly, and his glance seemed one of judgment upon her.

"A scandalous proceeding!" he broke out. "This night's work was a scandalous proceeding." Her startled flush arrested him, and his tone attained a sudden jocularity. "Well, I must leave you here to fight it out among yourselves. I have a piece of work that is calling loudly to me from the hill. Good-night!" He paid his bill, and strode away without another word.

"I never knew a man with such a range of learning," Leigh said; "he makes the rest of us seem like ignoramuses."

"We are all his students," Mrs. Parr put in, "whether we wish to be or not." She spoke with such feeling that the others were moved to laughter. For some time she had been looking from Leigh to Felicity with that birdlike movement of the head, until she had made a woman's great discovery, that her friend was not indifferent to his admiration. Without going so far as to wish Felicity to marry him, she was deeply pleased that he seemed to have driven away the more unworthy fancy. This was enough for the present, and her content shone in her glances toward the young man like an unspoken message of good-will.

As they stood on the curb outside while Mr. Parr went to find his carriage, the scene before them presented such a contrast with the experiences of the evening that instinctively they were hushed in contemplation. The bare branches of the trees in the park across the way were silvered by the rays of the full moon, which wrought a motionless tracery on the thin remnant of snow beneath. Through a gap could be seen the white shaft of the soldiers' monument, lifting high above the trees a splendid figure of Victory, with wings outspread against the pale sky. Modelled after the Pillar of Trajan, only more lovely in the purity of its white marble, it was one of the rare objects of art that gave Warwick a claim to distinction and justified the pride of its citizens. Around it were carved innumerable figures of soldiers, climbing a spiral pathway. Indistinguishable now in the moonlight, they still remained in the memory, like the echo of a martial song.

This was the first appeal of the night, made to the eye alone; but presently, despite the random noises of the street, they became aware of a dull, continuous sound, and knew that the stream which intersected the park on its way to the river had been freed from ice by the January thaw, and was pouring its swollen waters over the dam. The note was deep and full, like a solemn recitative, as if Nature's diurnal harmonies had sunk to this one transitional key. Above all, the mildness of the air, full of the alluring witchery of a false spring, affected the imagination like a delicate, ethereal wine.

Leigh lifted his head and swept the sky with the keenness of the scientist to whom its vast spaces are a familiar book; yet when he suddenly desisted and looked down at Felicity, she saw in his eyes the rare expression of the poet.

"It would almost seem," he said, "that Nature has gradually been taking on a more serene and mysterious beauty every moment, to rebuke the feverish struggles of men."

Their glances lingered, and he read in her a wild unhappiness and a suggestion of reckless daring that stirred his heart to he knew not what tempestuous emotions. He found in that look a license for his dreams, and made her the guardian of his conscience. He had no wish to be more honourable than she, and this surrender was attended by an ecstasy that derived its final sweetness from a sense of transgression. When the carriage came round, he handed Mrs. Parr in, and then hesitated.

"We ought to walk home such a night as this, Miss Wycliffe," he suggested.

Mrs. Parr leaned forward and laughed lightly with appreciation. "Felicity, dear," she said, "if you're going to walk, do draw up your hood, or you'll catch cold."

Leigh's heart grew warm with gratitude at this friendly interposition, and to his surprise even Parr himself seemed not indifferent to his cause. "Yes," he added, pulling at his cigar till it glowed redly, "this is the kind of weather when one catches cold easily. The worst cold I ever caught was during one of these January thaws." With this advice they drove away, pleased with their innocent cooperation.

Felicity, laughing at their warning, nevertheless accepted the suggestion. The long Shaker cloak gave a demure and Puritanical effect to her figure as her head disappeared beneath the hood, an effect of outline merely, for the richness of its crimson hue suggested other associations. For some time they walked in comparative silence through the park, pausing for a moment on the stone arch that spanned the stream to note the glint of the moon on the swirling water, and even when they found themselves at last in Birdseye Avenue, their talk was all of the night and the sorcery of its effects, veiling and again unconsciously betraying the nature of their inward thoughts.

A realisation of the fact that his opportunity was slipping by moved Leigh to desperation. Yet an opportunity for what? Try as he might, he could never understand how she had come to marry Emmet; her practical repudiation of the act could not undo it. What was he to hope for from this cruel and beautiful woman? He was indifferent to the fact that for some time he had not spoken.

"What are you thinking of?" she asked, turning upon him with a hint of challenge. "Has the moonlight bewitched you, Mr. Leigh?"

"Not the moonlight," he answered shortly, "though I am bewitched."

She regarded him with an air of inquiry, even of invitation. Was it possible that she failed to know what might result? Did she hunger for further evidences of her power?

"Don't look at me like that," he went on, "if you wish me to remember that you once forbade me to love you. Don't I know how hopeless my love is? Your eyes have come between me and my work day and night to invite me to take what you can never give, and what I believe you would not give if you could. Is n't it enough that you have been cruel to one man?"

They were passing her house, but neither paused. His passion had led him to disclose his knowledge of her secret, and her heart was gripped in a sudden fear. For the moment, it seemed to her that all Warwick must know, that the fact she now desired to conceal was common property, to be to-morrow the wonder of the town.

"See how deserted the street is," he said. "It is as if you and I were walking alone in the world, and who can tell when we shall be alone again?"

Presently he paused and faced her. She stood looking up at him, her face, framed by the gathered edge of her crimson hood, ethereally beautiful in the full moonlight.

"Do you know how a man feels when he loves you, Felicity?" he demanded. It was the first time he had ever addressed her by that name, but she accepted it without protest, waiting with parted lips for his next words. "How can you be so quiet?" he went on passionately. "It is n't possible that you can be as cruel as you seem! Why did n't you treat me brutally at the very first, and give me my answer before I was such a fool as to ask the question? That would have been kindness. But you let me hope, I don't know why, perhaps because you wanted to use me, perhaps to feed your vanity. Just now I hardly know what I am saying to you; but don't think that I shall be one of your victims. You owe me something, Felicity, some memory to carry with me the rest of my life. That at least I will have, even if I must pay for it by never seeing you again."

Before she could forestall his intention, he had drawn her into his arms. Her hand faltered in a vain effort against his breast, and she was lost. She leaned against him helplessly. "There," he said, kissing her once and again, "now you know how I love you."

They stood apart, trembling. In his eyes shone a mournful triumph, while her indignation was rendered speechless by a full knowledge of her responsibility for the act. She could have averted it, had she wished.

"I did not dream," he said at last, as if speaking to himself alone, "that a woman could be so sweet."

"Have you forgotten that I am"—She could not frame the word that hovered on her lips, nor maintain the dignity for which she strove against the suffocating tumult of joy that rioted in her heart.

"Your husband gave me his confidence," he answered bitterly. "You see how well I deserved it."

"Then you realise what you have done." There was a note of finality in her voice, and, turning slowly, she began to retrace her steps. She was unconscious of the fact that they were walking close together until the sound of a carriage overtaking them caused her to draw away instinctively and to glance with apprehension at the roadway. The vehicle passed within a few feet of the curb, and the bishop leaned forward with a look of recognition.

"Father has been to the reception," she said. "I must go in now."

"There is so much I want to say," he protested.

She smiled drearily. "You must spare me further humiliation," she answered. He knew her meaning without more words. He must not speak to her of her mistake, nor hint of the possibility of her freedom. Yet it was this possibility that struggled dumbly within them for recognition, so that now their mood was one of storm, all the more intense from its repression. They were conscious each moment of the man who stood between them, no longer the familiar figure, but one evoked by their mutual guilt and sublimated by Cardington's prophetic words, strong to avenge himself upon his enemies and betrayers. Leigh, convinced that Emmet would claim his own, suffered already the anguish of renunciation, more poignant that the pressure of her unresisting lips was still felt warmly on his own. Before her house he stooped and kissed her again without fear of repulse, chastened and subdued.

"Since it is to be good-bye," she said quietly.

He stood where she left him, watching her figure lessening between the trees until it was swallowed up in the shadow of the house. The door opened, he saw the crimson flash of her cloak for a moment in the light from within, and then she was gone.

The bishop, sitting beside the lamp with a book in his hand, glanced up as his daughter entered, with a keen inquiry in his deepset eyes.

"I thought I just passed you with Mr. Leigh," he remarked, watching the effect of his words. Her unusual colour and the brilliancy of her eyes served to confirm his suspicions, though her manner was as studiedly indifferent as his own. It was with difficulty that she restrained the trembling of her fingers fumbling with the fastening of her cloak.

"Yes," she answered. "Mr. Leigh met us at the Bradford after the President's speech, and the night was so beautiful that we walked home together."

Looking at her attentively, he was struck by a new softness and radiance in her beauty, and by the fact that the Shaker cloak was singularly becoming. He thought of his sermon on personal adornment, and in spite of his anxiety, a deep amusement dawned in his eyes. "And went around Robin Hood's barn, by the way," he supplemented.

"Is n't the longest way round the shortest way home?" she asked coolly. His smile had reassured her. Whatever he suspected, it was much less than the truth.

It was not in the bishop's nature to come out with a direct question that might precipitate a scene, except as a last resort, and he presently bade her good-night, after commenting upon the events of the evening with the casual interest of one accustomed to public spectacles. In reality, his interest had been deep, but now another matter demanded his thought, and he was willing to be alone. He was reminded by the encounter in the street that it was high time to put the machinery in operation by which the young professor was to be quietly dismissed from St. George's Hall. Satisfied with his analysis of his daughter's state of mind, he perfected his plan, and went to bed in comparative content.

Leigh sat for a long time staring at the flame of his lamp and striving to take reckoning with himself. He could no more have told how he found his way to his room than if he had been carried thither in a state of insensibility, but there he was, trying to think, while mere emotion still held a riotous sway. He had kissed her, and the touch of her lips, the fragrance of her skin, were even now present in his senses. The experience caused him to readjust his impression of her. She had lost something in his eyes. What was it? Not height; though she seemed less tall. The change was not in stature. Like Pygmalion, he had found the marble grow warm and human beneath his caress; he was still bewildered by the wonder of it, and mad with a sense of triumph. She had lost her inaccessibility, her inviolable distance, but she had gained in womanly quality, gained infinitely upon his heart, so that now he longed for only one thing—to take her in his arms once more. At the thought he flushed warmly; but suddenly his heart grew cold, as her words came back so vividly to his mind that they seemed spoken audibly in the room: "Since it is to be good-bye."

He arose from his chair and walked rapidly up and down the room, as if to escape from his own condemnation. Had he, then, no honour at all? The question brought him face to face with his naked soul, and he was afraid. What sophistry was that by which he had justified his act? He had argued that it was to be a kiss of farewell, and no sooner had he attained his wish than all thought of the stipulation vanished utterly from his mind, leaving only a more insatiable longing. The last vestige of his morality seemed to be swept away, and memory made the taste of stolen waters still sweet to his lips. When he judged Emmet so severely, he was proudly sure of his own standards, but now he felt he had none. Her husband's scornful and warning look, the day they encountered each other in the street, was then prophetic. The man estimated him unerringly, and knew what he had to fear.

Reflection had come at last, and would not down. Surely, Emmet was the more honourable of the two, and had been more sinned against than sinning. He had slipped, had recovered himself, and was honestly striving to make amends. How shamefully cruel his treatment had been from every hand, from his wife's, his friend's, his political opponents'! Where was now his own guilty triumph of a few moments since? He sank into his chair once more, and faced the fact that Emmet had given him an example to follow, that he must keep his promise not to see Felicity again.

His eye fell upon his pipe and he seized it avidly. At the table, he had not smoked with Cardington and Parr; he had scarcely eaten. Now, the tobacco brought peculiar relief to his over-wrought mind, and dulled for a few moments the edge of his remorse. In the wavering clouds of smoke he saw her eyes once more. And the crimson cloak! Was ever a wrap worn by mortal woman so bewitching, so deliciously contradictory in its suggestions? The Shaker women never married, and this was their peculiar garment, though they always wore one of sad, monotonous gray. Every winter they came to Warwick and sold cloaks of worldly colours to the rich young women of the town, seeking money for their dwindling settlement. In the contradiction between the demureness of outline and the warmth of colour the wearer found a weapon of coquetry.

Presently the pipe was smoked out, and then the second and the third, with gradual lessening of narcotic power. The vision of the senses was gone, and the relentless reality of duty returned. Once more he left his chair and began his restless pacing to and fro. Thus the miserable night wore on, until he threw himself upon his bed to win the oblivion of sleep.

But now another memory assailed him: the night following his meeting with Felicity in the woods, when, during fitful dreams, a vision of that strange figure rising up in the shadows beyond the fire returned to haunt him. Suddenly he was sitting up in bed, staring into the darkness. In despair he went to his windows and raised the curtains to see if it were near the dawn. It was four o'clock, but night still covered the wintry landscape. The full moon was setting in the west. Transformed from a natural object by the medium of his over-strained and weary mind, it now presented a sinister and mocking face, as it peered through the diamonded panes and poured a flood of yellow light upon the floor.



CHAPTER XVI

THE BLINDNESS OF THE BISHOP

The following morning, Felicity did not appear at the breakfast-table, a circumstance sufficiently unusual to cause the bishop some uneasiness, for she rarely failed to rise at a reasonable hour.

"Lena," he said, "go upstairs and see whether Miss Wycliffe is ill, but don't wake her if she is still asleep."

Left alone, he glanced over the morning paper, too much absorbed in the hypothesis that would explain his daughter's non-appearance to find much amusement in the editor's bland and innocuous comments upon the sensational episode of the preceding night. He recalled her evident excitement and preoccupation when she came in from her walk with Leigh. If her interview with the young man had been what he feared, it was natural she should have lain awake long into the night, and his heart misgave him at this additional confirmation of his insight.

When Lena Harpster received no response to her gentle tap, she ventured to open the door softly and to step within her mistress's room. The lightest sleeper could scarcely have been awakened by her entrance, as noiseless as a shadow or the slow swaying of a curtain. She stood near the foot of the bed, in the dim and fragrant room, looking at the beautiful head upon the pillow, the dark, abundant hair, the half-open lips relaxed from the control of the mind, revealing now more clearly all the promises and passions which when awake they might deny.

Some sense of the awe and mystery of sleep caused Lena to stand thus motionless at gaze, herself a pale, ethereal figure, scarcely less beautiful than her mistress. There was a guilty consciousness also of deliberate intrusion. Familiar as she was with the room, it now took on a different aspect to her eyes. All the objects of art, the tapestries and pictures and statuettes, which she had admired for themselves, seemed in a peculiar way the property of their happy owner, an overflowing expression of her abundant loveliness. What a contrast that lace-covered bed, that nest of luxury, presented to her own simple couch beneath the roof, which served merely as a place where she could lie down and rest! And there was another contrast of which she was unaware. The sleeping face was more instinct with life, though Sleep is said to be the brother of Death, than the shadowed eyes that watched.

Miss Wycliffe, she reflected, had only to wish for a thing, and possession was assured. Above all, it was the thought that she might also have taken her lover from her which kept the girl's eyes fixed in wistful speculation. She had ventured to write again to Emmet, but without result; he had even passed her blindly on the street, leaving her faint, with a whispered greeting dying pathetically on her lips. How could she contend with her mistress, if what she feared were true? Yet how slender her cause of suspicion! Only the incident of the ring, which Miss Wycliffe had explained most naturally; but the final warning against Emmet remained in her mind as a declaration of possession.

It was characteristic of Lena's nature that she yielded to no one in appreciation of Felicity's beauty. Chastened rather than embittered by a conviction of her own loss, she was not without a consciousness of the appealing change which sleep now made in the woman she had such cause to dread. No hint remained of that imperious quality which moulded others to her will. She seemed to have grown softer, and there was something childlike in the position of her arm on the counterpane, in her hand turned palm upward, in her half-curled fingers. A lover, were he a poet, might have likened them to the petals of a flower that had begun to open with returning day. Presently the sleeper stirred and opened her eyes, dimly aware of a retreating presence and a closing door, but when, an hour later, she awoke fully, the impression was like that of a dream.

It was ten o'clock when she rang her bell and ordered breakfast in her room. This order was as unusual as her late sleep, but she seemed to herself to have awakened a different person, one in whom such small changes of action were merely an index of greater possibilities. She received her father's inquiries through Lena with indifference, and sent back word that she had been only over-tired. Knowing that he lingered below to see her, she delayed deliberately until he should grow impatient and leave the house, for she wished to take up again the train of thought that had kept her so long awake the previous night. At present, her sole concern was of herself and of her lover.

Having placed the steaming cup of coffee beside her on the dressing-table, she sipped it from time to time while she fastened up her hair. Like Leigh, she too had come to a new realisation of self, but the revelation was attended with far less of spiritual turmoil. It was as if she were making her own acquaintance over again, and the process was not without fascination. He had called her cruel. Was there truth in the charge? She had never been conscious of intentional cruelty, and yet she was intellectual enough to see that her husband might have good reason to accuse her of it in her treatment of him. But Leigh had no such cause of complaint, unless he would hold her responsible for her beauty. There must be some expression in her face which she herself had never seen, which she could never summon from its reflection in the mirror, an expression of desire, impersonal it might be, but moving the beholder to a personal response.

She was pleased, rather than distressed, by Leigh's condemnation. In spite of his talk of cruelty and vanity, he had said he did not know a woman could be so sweet. She knew she could be sweet to the man she loved, and that no one had ever yet divined how much she had to give. She placed the back of her hand against her lips and tried to imagine how they had felt to him when he kissed them. The youthfulness of the action and the fancy made her smile, and showed her how far she had gone in thinking of him as a lover.

Her sense of guilt was less acute than her realisation of the difficulty of her position. It came upon her that she was one day nearer discovery and condemnation. As yet no plan of action had taken final shape in her mind. She did not know whether she would wait for discovery to come and find her, or take the initiative. Leigh's declaration had acted as a sedative on her unhappiness, and had banished the desire of an explanation with her husband. She would fain arrest time while the situation remained as it was, while Leigh was not yet lost to her for good. What did she mean by allowing him to kiss her a second time? Did she wish to make amends for the suffering she had caused, or was her acquiescence a fatal admission? In the latter case, what hope or consolation could she find in this new discovery?

Cardington too came in for a share of her thought, but scarcely for a share of her concern. Whatever his suspicions or knowledge, she was sure that his affection and loyalty would keep him silent. If his final outbreak at the table the previous evening expressed his indignation at Emmet's treatment, it seemed to tell also his acceptance of the inevitable, and to convey to her in her doubt his advice, almost his entreaty. It was as if he had pointed out to her the path of duty, and warned her against his colleague, not in a spirit of jealousy, but in the spirit of a friend who had readied an absolute renunciation of whatever hopes he might once have cherished, and now thought only of her. For a moment she softened almost to the point of tears, but this indulgence was brief. A vision of her husband's bulldog air, as he sat there baffled and at bay, returned to menace her. She realised that he would not leave matters longer as they were, that he might force the crisis that very day. The mettle of the bishop's daughter was never more apparent than now, as she faced the probable results of her own actions. She was by no means inclined to take her punishment quietly, or to admit that she was in the wrong. Having ruled her husband so long, she would not now allow him to dictate to her, but would fight for her own happiness. Her hands clenched involuntarily, and her breath came quick with militant excitement. Had she been a man, her career, in whatever line she might have chosen, could scarcely have been less than remarkable.

Meanwhile the bishop was frittering the morning away by a desultory attention to his correspondence, hoping each moment that Felicity would pass the open door of his study. He was no longer a busy man, for the onerous duties of his office were now taken by his coadjutor, and he could well afford to wait. He did not know what he wished to say to her, but he would see her face again and observe her manner, that he might examine anew his grounds of suspicion. For him there were no longer golden hours which it were a sin for others to filch from him. In the sunset of his life he dreamed of the active labours of his successors, of the institution which he would leave in a position to feed more generously the ministry of the Church. Should he allow her foolish fancy for a fortune hunter to divert her from the purpose he hoped she would one day cherish? Even if a husband made no attempt to dissuade her, a child would inevitably become an heir, and her plans would be solely for him. Cold and austere by nature, he had married his own position to wealth, and he felt no desire to perpetuate his line under the name of another man. Above all, he shrunk from the thought of his daughter's marriage as from a profanation. She was so like him in certain mental traits and interests that he could not appreciate the temperamental difference that kept them far apart.

As the hands of the clock crept toward eleven, he realised that the morning was slipping away, and that he could wait no longer if he was to see President Renshaw before he went to lunch. A few minutes later, he stood in the hall, a distinguished and old-fashioned figure, with his silk hat, his long cape, and his gold-headed ebony cane. Lena Harpster was there, dusting an antique chair of ecclesiastical design that looked as if it had been imported from the chancel of some English cathedral.

"Lena," he said, laying his letters on the table and beginning to draw on his gloves, "don't forget to give these to the postman when he comes; and tell Miss Wycliffe I shall be home to lunch."

She opened the door for his exit and started back against the wall with a little cry, as if she had seen a ghost, for there, blocking the bishop's way, his hand extended to touch the bell, stood Mayor Emmet. The bishop, too much surprised to note the panic of his servant, was silent for a moment. It did not occur to him that the call could be on any one but himself. How great would his astonishment have been, had he known that poor Lena was almost fainting beside him with the wild hope that her lover had come to claim her at last! How great his stupefaction, could he have seen his daughter standing midway on the stairs, one hand on the baluster, the other raised to her heart in petrifying fear! It was fortunate indeed for Felicity that she had time, unobserved in the shadow of the stairway, to regain her self-control. Had she descended a moment earlier, had she been at the door when Lena threw it open, she could hardly have answered for herself.

The bishop retreated a step, as if he would thereby invite his visitor's entrance, but, busy with his gloves, his cane hugged under one arm, he failed, without the effect of discourtesy, to extend his hand.

"Ah, good-morning, Mr. Emmet," he said in his courtly and deliberate manner, and with that suggestion of a purr in his voice which always betokened concealment and a latent ability to spring. "You find me just about to go out, but I still have a little leeway. Won't you step in?"

He was not without curiosity in regard to the object of the mayor's visit. Speculation glimmered in his eyes, and his wide, affable smile was subtle with anticipation of a diplomatic test. He was secretly amused that Emmet should presume upon his blushing honours in this fashion, but doubtless the man had a plausible excuse for his intrusion, some civic scheme for which he wished to bespeak cooperation. After his humiliation the previous night, he had conceived a plan for drawing some of his opponents into his own camp, and this was perhaps the first movement of the new campaign. So ran the bishop's conjecture, and he was not surprised at his visitor's unmistakable air of excitement, at the pallor of his face. Perhaps his drubbing at the hands of Cobbens had taught him more respect for the class he had been wont to denounce to his followers, and had deprived him of a moiety of his self-assurance.

"Bishop Wycliffe," Emmet returned, coming into the hall and taking off his hat, "I had n't decided to call upon you—yet. It is your daughter whom I wish to see."

It was months since the bishop had given Felicity's advocacy of this man a thought. The election seemed to have killed her interest, for she had not spoken of him since, and besides, his suspicions were centred solely on Leigh. Perhaps, then, the scheme was one of charity, and the mayor had planned to begin with Felicity, remembering her former kindness.

The bishop hesitated, when the rustle of silken skirts caused him to turn his head, but he greeted Felicity's appearance unperturbed.

"Oh, here you are, my dear. I thought you had gone out."

"I overheard I had a caller," she returned, taking her husband's hand and meeting his eyes unflinchingly. "I have n't had a chance to congratulate you, Mr. Emmet, upon your election, for we had to go South the next day on account of father's health. You caught me at the feminine trick of listening over the banisters."

The bishop was secretly annoyed at her cordiality, but still confident that he could trust his daughter to remember the difference between a common interest in charitable work and social equality.

"I leave Mr. Emmet in your hands," he said to her. "I have a little business at the Hall, and shall return for lunch."

And he went out, thinking how like a bewildered yokel the mayor seemed in the face of his daughter's graceful greeting, and imagining with relish his further discomfiture.

The door had closed behind him, and as yet Emmet had not said a word to his wife. Even now it was she who took the initiative.

"Let us go into the drawing-room," she suggested, turning and leading the way. He followed at once, brushing past Lena with cruel emphasis of manner. There she stood, or rather leaned against the wall, like one stricken. The jar of his passing seemed to release the tension of her limbs, and she sank down slowly, noiselessly, in a dead faint. Emmet neither heeded her anguish nor heard her soft fall upon the heavy rug. He hurriedly closed the drawing-room door to prevent his sweetheart from overhearing his interview with his wife, and strode into the centre of the room, where Felicity had turned at bay.

"What have you come for?" she asked in a low voice. Her face was as white as his own, but her self-control was greater.

"For you, Felicity," he answered. "You are my wife, and I 've come for you."

"I did n't know," she returned relentlessly, "but you had come to see that poor girl in the hall to whom you gave my ring. Looking from the stairs, I saw by her manner that she thought so too."

"My God, Felicity!" he gasped, "I believe you 've kept her in this house like a bird in a cage, to torture her as you 've tortured me. Why did n't you send her away, when you discovered I 'd been making love to her?"

"For your greater convenience?"

"Oh, as for that," he retorted, "when you left her here in Warwick and went away, you practically threw her into my arms. But I did n't take advantage of it,—only once,—and then I stopped short. That was what I came to explain. I want you to know how much less cause you have to throw me over in this way than you think. I want you to forgive me, and to keep your promise. She's nothing to me—nothing. She 's no more to me than any one of the dozen men you 've been running around with are to you,—Cobbens, for example, or that young professor up at the Hall."

There was more than a suggestion of scorn in his refusal to mention his real rival by name, and in the belittling adjective. His assumption that she cared nothing for Leigh would perhaps have found acceptance in her mind only the day before, but now a memory of last night's scene made her as cruel to her husband as he had just been to Lena Harpster. She looked at him coolly, aware of her utter awakening from the adventurous and romantic mood she had mistaken for love, wondering also that she should ever have supposed this man capable of satisfying her ideal. The ideal itself had vanished in the personality of the man who had taken her in his arms the previous night and poured his passionate love into her ears.

"It is n't a question of forgiving, Tom," she said, after a pause; and her tone was conciliatory. "It's a question of discovery. I was deceived in you. I did n't think you capable of such—such weakness and vulgarity. It was my fault of judgement, perhaps, but the awakening is fatal. Can't you see that?"

"What do you mean to do?" he demanded, glaring at her helplessly. Their points of view were so different, her expression so unrelenting, that the self-justification he had planned to speak was choked in his throat. "Do you mean to get a divorce? I tell you, Felicity, there 's no cause."

"I don't know yet what I mean to do," she said frankly.

"I 'll call upon your father, then," he declared grimly, "and see what he thinks of it." An ugly gleam shone in his eyes, as he uttered the threat. It was plain now that love for his wife was the least of his motives in demanding her; there was ambition, but, strongest of all, a desire for revenge on the bishop and his class. He would make them accept him at last. They should pay dearly for their scorn. "I 'll not be elbowed out of the way and kept in the closet like a family skeleton any longer," he went on. "The limit of my endurance has been reached."

Felicity now saw clearly what she had brought upon herself. She paled with fear, and flushed with anger, but neither emotion coloured her reply.

"You must give me a few days longer. I prefer to see my father first—alone. I will let you know—I'll write."

So absorbed were they in their own tense feelings that they failed to hear the opening and shutting of the front door, which was left unlatched during the day for just such unconventional calls as the one Mrs. Parr now happened to make. The first intimation they had of interruption was her shrill and terror-stricken cry: "Felicity! Felicity! Your maid is here in the hall—dead!"

Emmet reached Lena's side first. He raised her in his arms and carried her into the room he had just left, where he laid her gently on a couch. Felicity had already run upstairs for brandy and smelling-salts. Emmet, standing over Lena in guilty solicitude, addressed Mrs. Parr.

"Open the window," he said brusquely, "and give her some air."

She obeyed without question, and Felicity, returning with restoratives, found her husband hovering over her maid with tell-tale anxiety written on every feature, while her friend stood at the window looking on in curious conjecture. Together they bent over the girl's white face and moistened her lips with brandy. Presently, Lena's eyelids fluttered and trembled open. The mayor lifted her once more, as if she were a child, and stood erect.

"I 'll carry her to her room," he said to Felicity, "if you 'll show me the way."

"It's two flights of stairs," she objected. "Perhaps she had better stay here for a while."

"She's as light as a feather, poor girl," he returned. "She 's nothing for me to carry."

"You forget, Felicity," Mrs. Parr put in, with double meaning, "that Mr. Emmet is an athlete."

Without further protest, Felicity led the way upstairs, and Emmet followed with his burden. It was inevitable that the gentle clinging of those arms about his neck, the pressure of her golden head, should melt his heart like wax and make temporary havoc of his resolution. Impulsively he bent his face until it rested a moment in her hair. Circumstances had thrown them together once more in their natural relationship, both of them scorned, each needing and understanding the other in a peculiar way. No bold claims or passionate protests could have won the tender consideration her patient suffering drew from him.

Felicity opened the door, and stood aside to let him pass. He laid Lena carefully on her little bed and arranged her pillow, then turned toward the door. It was still open, though his wife no longer stood there, and he heard the diminishing rustle of her skirts. He stood looking first at the door and then back again at the bed, irresolutely. Lena opened her eyes and smiled at him with ineffable sweetness, and the temptation was overpowering. He took one noiseless step and sank upon his knees beside her.

"Good-bye, Lena," he murmured brokenly, the stinging and unaccustomed tears springing to his eyes; "good-bye, my poor little girl. If she were not my wife—my God, Lena, if she were only not my wife!"

The revelation could add nothing to the emotions she had already experienced. She was sure of his love; in her weakness and spiritual exaltation, that was enough. They were now bound together by a common tragedy, and she knew his gain was loss. If he had made her suffer, he had brought no less suffering upon himself, and her eyes shone with a pitiful triumph. His arms were about her, and his cheek was pressed to her own upon the pillow. Too weak herself to speak, or even to weep, her eyes told him all she wished to say.

"Forgive me, Lena," he entreated, "forgive me before I go."

"I do, Tom, dear," she whispered. "You know I do."

Her words fell upon his soul with infinite consolation. He felt that he had received the pardon of Heaven for his sins, and could now depart bravely to work out his penance. Softened and exalted, he little realised that the penance was unnecessary and self-imposed, that the mood which now took on the heroic tone of self-sacrifice was still a mood of self-seeking, that his love for Lena was selfish now as it had always been, and utterly unworthy of the devotion he received. It was true that he loved her, but he loved himself and his ambitions and revenges more. Her forgiveness was but permission to indulge them to the end. Nevertheless, when he found Felicity at the telephone in the hall below, his eyes were still bright with tears. She hung up the receiver and turned to him coldly. One glance at his face told her his state of mind and justified her own. She had never seen him at his worst before. Hypocritical with himself, filled with mawkish emotion that sublimated him in his own eyes, yet still grimly bent upon his original purpose, he had reached the very nadir of unattractiveness.

"I have sent for the doctor," she informed him, in the tone of one who has done her duty. "He will be here soon."

"Your answer," he said hoarsely. "I cannot leave without an answer."

"I will write—soon," she returned, "but leave me now."

Without further insistence he turned from her and ran downstairs. He was out on the sidewalk before he became aware that his head was uncovered. He returned to the drawing-room and found his hat on the floor, where it had fallen from his hand at Mrs. Parr's shrill alarm. She stood there still, waiting for Felicity's return, but neither looked at the other or spoke a word, frankly and mutually contemptuous. The door slammed behind him a second time, and almost immediately afterward Felicity entered.

"Well, Ella," she said, sinking into a chair, "did you ever see such an excitement? I never had a greater shock in my life than when you called out that she was dead. I 'm afraid she's a very delicate girl, but she 's coming around all right, and I 've sent for the doctor." She showed unmistakably the strain she had endured.

"Felicity," her friend broke out excitedly, "there's something here I don't understand. You don't mean to tell me you actually allow that man to call on you!"

Miss Wycliffe opened her eyes in astonishment. "What a goose you are, Ella! He came to see father. I had n't time to find out what he wanted when you nearly frightened me out of my wits."

Mrs. Parr, only partially convinced, was forced to accept the explanation; and though her eyes adumbrated reproach, she dared not say more. She remembered, however, the picture of Leigh and Felicity going off together in the moonlight the previous evening, and was reassured. In fact, she had run in to gossip about the young man, and to sound his praises with design, but the situation she encountered at her entering had revived her old suspicions concerning Emmet. Now she told herself that they were merely a habit of mind, without justification. She recalled the mayor's emotion as he bent over Lena, his averted face when he returned for his hat, and plunged at once into an account of the episode at the inn, which she had hitherto kept to herself. Before long they were discussing the probable nature of the tie between Emmet and Lena with apparently equal interest and conjecture.

About this time, the bishop, coming from Dr. Renshaw's office, met Leigh face to face on the walk as he was returning to his room from a recitation, and stopped to speak to him.

"Mr. Leigh," he remarked, with an observant twinkle in his eyes, "you look as if last night's experience had been too much for you."

"We had enough strenuous excitement to keep any one awake," was the reply. "It was too violent a break in my monastic life."

The bishop's smile widened; his innuendo had been skilfully parried. "When you get to be my age," he said, "you will doubtless take your politics more calmly. I never lose sleep now over the vicissitudes of those whom the fickle crowd has raised to honour. How does the line run? Hunc, si mobilium turba Quiritium—but you probably remember your Horace better than I do."

It was one of Bishop Wycliffe's little perversities to quote Latin at the devotees of science, and to maintain an ironical assumption of their appreciation.

"I don't remember a word of my Horace," Leigh declared. It was not the first time he had given the bishop the same information, and this fact lent emphasis to his tone.

"Too bad, too bad," the old man murmured. "I fear the rising generation has no atmosphere." And he went on his way, chuckling genially.



CHAPTER XVII

CONDITIONS

"Dr. Leigh," said President Renshaw, in his gentle and measured utterance, "I sent for you on a little matter of business, for a few minutes of conversation, if you are at leisure."

The young astronomer signified that his time was the president's, and waited for his next words with an oppressive sense of vague foreboding. They were sitting in the room he had first entered, and Dr. Renshaw occupied the chair in which he then sat. As Leigh glanced about the room and back again at the old man's face, that first meeting seemed but yesterday, so unaltered was the scene. The tall clock, the old chair, the black cloth mitre with its tarnished gold insignia, the framed plans of St. George's Hall, were all in the same places. The president had not changed in the interim; it even seemed that he had not moved. But beyond the shapely oval of the old man's head a glimpse of wintry landscape was framed by the narrow window, instead of that earlier vision of the September morning.

In Leigh's alert and sensitive mood, these relics taunted him with their own permanence in the face of change. Those sticks of wood, those drawings, that piece of black cloth, were as ancient in a sense as the pyramids, and would retain their places while generations came before them, laboured their brief day, and then vanished as a puff of steam vanishes into blue sky. The clock had long since run down for good, and seemed by virtue of this very fact to have gained a victory over time.

"You remember, doubtless," the president resumed, "that your appointment was for this year only, and I asked you to come in to—in short, I should like to inquire whether you have made any plans for the future."

The form of the question was such that it might have been merely a preface to an offer of a permanent appointment, but Leigh divined too clearly the doctor's inward distress to give it such an interpretation. The dismissal of which he now felt assured was scarcely a surprise. It seemed but natural that the greater loss of Felicity should include the lesser loss of his position, and he smiled bitterly.

"You mean to suggest, sir, that some such plans on my part are advisable?"

"We might say it amounts to that," Dr. Renshaw returned reluctantly. His age, the kindness of his manner and tone, were disarming, and his listener entertained no more personal resentment toward him than if he were an ancient sibyl uttering of necessity the will of the Fates.

"I had not thought it necessary to make plans for next year," he said, "not being conscious of any shortcomings on my part sufficient to cause my dismissal. I am well aware that you are strictly within your rights, and that I have no legal redress, perhaps even no cause of complaint. I know how subordinates in business are turned away to suit the convenience, or at the whim, of their superiors; but in most colleges there is a sort of unwritten law that promotion shall follow efficient service. As a rule, the one year appointment is merely a safeguard to protect the institution from a man seriously incompetent or depraved."

"I know—I know," the president interposed, raising his hand as if to ward off more words. "And I would not have you think for a moment that we view you in any such light. On the contrary, I may say that personally I entertain for you the highest regard and consideration."

"What is the matter, then?" Leigh demanded. "It seems no more than fair that I should be told definitely where the trouble lies."

The other reflected awhile. "If I were to mention the one definite complaint, Mr. Leigh, it would not sum up the whole situation; it would be an explanation that only partially explained. However, the complaint has to do with your discipline in the class-room."

Leigh stared incredulously. "Discipline?" he echoed.

"Disorder in your class-room," Dr. Renshaw corroborated firmly. "Those passing by have heard laughter and unseemly shouts from within."

"Who could have made such a report?" Leigh wondered, still at a loss.

"The information came through a responsible channel, through one whose duty it is to take cognisance of such things and to report them to the proper authorities."

He was surprised to see that his listener was laughing, not without a suggestion of scornfulness. "I 've heard the same unseemly shouts myself, Dr. Renshaw. They come from class meetings and athletic meetings that are held in my room nearly every day, when the place is not being used for recitations. There is n't a word of truth in the charge against me."

Dr. Renshaw's face clouded, and he cleared his throat uneasily. "Mr. Leigh," he said with dignity, "I told you that the complaint would fail to sum up the whole situation. We may say Quaestio cadit in regard to that, if you like. Let us look at it in another light, in the light of the best interests of the Hall and of yourself. There is a question of general fitness which implies no criticism upon yourself, upon your scholarship or character. We are a homogeneous community here, we understand each other and cherish the ideals which this college was built to inculcate. You are a product of an entirely different tradition. You were educated, and have previously taught, in a large university, and this makes it difficult, perhaps impossible, for you to appreciate the needs and the point of view of the small college. The ideal of the professor in a university is self-improvement and personal achievement; but in the small college, the teacher is expected to give, above everything else, personal service and devotion to the interests of his students. He should stand to a large extent sancti parentis loco. I do not say that you have consciously failed to improve this opportunity of service; I would say rather that, because of your previous academic experiences, you have failed to see it. The conviction has therefore been forced upon us, in spite of our personal regard for you and our appreciation of your attainments, that you would be happier and more useful in a larger institution, where the point of contact begins and ends in the class-room. In short, I believe you will agree with us that the experiment has not been altogether a success from this point of view. I accept your explanation of the specific charge gladly, and congratulate you upon correcting an impression that did you injustice."

It was Leigh's first meeting in his professional life with that malign experience, injustice in the garb of plausibility, from which there is no appeal. He could not bring himself to acquiesce in silence, though he knew that explanation and protest were vain.

"Dr. Renshaw," he rejoined, in a voice that showed his deep chagrin and sense of wrong, "the proved falsity of the first charge throws suspicion on the second, which is, after all, mainly a conjecture as to my state of mind in regard to St. George's Hall. I must plead guilty to the sin of personal ambition; but how can you expect a man to become entirely identified with the spirit of a place in a few months? It is evident to me that there are certain men who wish me gone, for reasons best known to themselves, and that they have trumped up these absurd charges." He flung himself to his feet indignantly. "This merely illustrates how easy it is to find plausible complaints against any man, and also that even-handed justice is the last thing one should look for in the world."

The president rose also. They were standing almost in darkness, but the afterglow of the sunset, streaming through the western windows and an intervening door, illumined the old man's face. His expression was one of concern, tempered by an humorous appreciation of the youthfulness of Leigh's last remark.

"Young man," he said, putting his hand on Leigh's shoulder, much as if he were admonishing a student, "I beg you not to allow this experience to colour your views with cynicism, for cynicism hurts only the cynic, and fails to take account of all the facts of life. As you have intimated, even-handed justice, inasmuch as it implies omniscience, is an attribute of God alone, but we have not been consciously unjust to you, according to our light. Personally I regret your departure, and I wish to assure you of my confidence in your future. You will doubtless one day look back upon this apparent contretemps as a blessing in disguise."

Leigh was far from being mollified by this platitudinous commiseration, though he credited the kindness of heart that gave it birth; and he took leave of the president without further remark. Then he went out into the twilight, more deeply humiliated than ever before in his life.

His loss of Felicity had been sweetened by love's triumph. There was in it the sustaining exaltation of tragedy, and a lingering ray of unreasonable hope; but this reverse was harder to bear, in that he suffered injustice without the possibility of appeal, and was deprived of professional importance in the eyes of the woman he loved, of the position which, slight as it must seem to her, was yet all he had to offset her wealth and social consequence.

There are times when even the stoutest hearts are appalled by the cruel handicap of poverty, when they are tempted to throw over their ideal, to rush into the market-place and make money by fair means or foul, that they may return and shake it in the faces of their foes. Leigh knew well that the possession of means would have made him immune from this attack, would have won him consideration instead of contumely, compliments instead of complaints. The Roman satirist, eating out his soul with bitterness against the insolence of wealth, said that poverty's greatest bane was the fact that it made men ridiculous. He was speaking, to be sure, of clothes; but what could be more ridiculous than an assumption of equality, based upon equal education and breeding, between the poor and the rich?

The young mathematician had not yet established a commanding professional reputation. He had given up a position which was now filled by one of the fifty applicants that had rushed to seize it; his present position at St. George's, he knew, could be filled as easily. He had not the consolation of knowing himself to be valuable to the institution. No one would rise up indignantly and take his part; no one would care what became of him, except Felicity, and pride alone would keep him from appealing to her.

He looked up at the great towers, buttressed by deep shadows, as if he bade them farewell. Already they seemed to take on a strange and unfriendly aspect. This mass of masonry had expressed hostility to him on that September morning, he had read a warning in each impassive or grinning gargoyle, and now, as he passed by, he could almost imagine that they gave sibilant expression to their accomplished malice. He realised how completely he had forgotten that first impression and allowed his imagination to be captured by the place. Where now were the dreams in which he had lately begun to indulge, visions of the finished square, of turret and gable and tower, of gothic gateways, of foliated chapel windows glimmering high in the darkened wall at evening?