can lie like
hell. But," he added importantly, "I don't know that I will let you."
This, he assured himself, was purely experimental. He had decided nothing;
his course in the future was hidden from him absolutely. He thought
discontentedly of his home, of the imagined long, dun vista of years.

He was now, he realized dimly, at the crucial point of his existence: with
Meta Beggs, in that world of which Paris was the prefigurement, he might
still wring from life a measure of the sharp pleasures of tempestuous
youth and manhood; he might still dance to the piping of the senses. With
Lettice in Greenstream he would rapidly sink into the dullness of
increasing age.

He was vaguely conscious of the baseness of the mere weighing of such a
choice; but he was engulfed in his overmastering egotism; his sense of
obligation was dulled by the supreme selfishness of a lifetime, of a
lifetime of unbridled temper and appetite, of a swaggering self-esteem
which the remorseless operation of fate had ignored, had passed
indifferently by, leaving him in complete ignorance of the terrible and
grim possibilities of human mischance.

He had suffered at the loss of his dwelling, but principally it had been
his pride that had borne the wound; Clare's death had affected him finally
as the arbitrary removal of a sentimental object for his care, on which to
lavish the gifts of his large generosity.

He sat revolving in his mind the choice of paths which seemed to open for
his decision in such different directions, which seemed to await the
simple ordering of his footsteps as he chose. The night deepened to its
darkest hour; the moon, in obedience to its automatic, fixed course, had
vanished behind the mountains; the frogs, out of their slime, raised their
shrill plaint of life in death.

XVI

"I've got something for you," Gordon said suddenly.

"I hope it's pretty," she replied, leaning forward, resting against his
shoulder.

He brought from his pocket the slender, looped necklace of seed pearls. It
was faintly visible in the dark, the diamond clasp made a small glint. She
took it eagerly from him. "I'll light a match," he told her. In the
minute, orange radiance the pearls shimmered in her fingers.

"But it's wonderful!" she exclaimed, unable to suppress her surprise at
his unerring choice; "it's exactly right. Have you been to Stenton?
however could you get this here?"

"Oh, I know a few things," he assured her; "I got an