of the
dark square below, his hands in his pockets, his head down, a reflective
frown about his eyes. A half-intoxicated old ruffian, a policeman, and a
man in a straw hat had stopped below, and were holding a palaver.

"Yus," the old ruffian said, "I'm a rackety old blank; but what I say
is, if we wus all alike, this would n't be a world!"

They went their way, and before the listener's eyes there rose Antonia's
face, with its unruffled brow; Halidome's, all health and dignity; the
forehead of the goggle-eyed man, with its line of hair parted in the
centre, and brushed across. A light seemed to illumine the plane of
their existence, as the electric lamp with the green shade had illumined
the pages of the Matthew Arnold; serene before Shelton's vision lay
that Elysium, untouched by passion or extremes of any kind, autocratic;
complacent, possessive, and well-kept as any Midland landscape. Healthy,
wealthy, wise! No room but for perfection, self-preservation, the
survival of the fittest! "The part of the good citizen," he thought:
"no, if we were all alike, this would n't be a world!"

CHAPTER VI

MARRIAGE SETTLEMENT

"My dear Richard" (wrote Shelton's uncle the next day), "I shall be glad
to see you at three o'clock to-morrow afternoon upon the question of
your marriage settlement...." At that hour accordingly Shelton made
his way to Lincoln's Inn Fields, where in fat black letters the names
"Paramor and Herring (Commissioners for Oaths)" were written on the wall
of a stone entrance. He ascended the solid steps with nervousness, and
by a small red-haired boy was introduced to a back room on the first
floor. Here, seated at a table in the very centre, as if he thereby
better controlled his universe, a pug-featured gentleman, without a
beard, was writing. He paused. "Ow, Mr. Richard!" he said; "glad to see
you, sir. Take a chair. Your uncle will be disengaged in 'arf a minute";
and in the tone of his allusion to his employer was the satirical
approval that comes with long and faithful service. "He will do
everything himself," he went on, screwing up his sly, greenish, honest
eyes, "and he 's not a young man."

Shelton never saw his uncle's clerk without marvelling at the prosperity
deepening upon his face. In place of the look of harassment which on
most faces begins to grow after the age of fifty, his old friend's
countenance, as though in sympathy with the nation, had expanded--a
little greasily, a little