he was always willing to argue creed
and code with a frankness rare in the self-conscious English
race: he was never shy and there was little in him that was
distinctively English. But he was too subtle and inconsistent
for the average homogeneous Englishman, and not even the comrades
of trench and tent knew much about his private life. Lawrence
was one of those products of a high civilization which have in
them pretty strong affinities with barbarism,--but always with a
difference. The noble savage tortures his enemy out of hate or
revenge: Lawrence, more sophisticated in brutality, was capable
of doing it by way of a psychological experiment. The savage
takes a short cut from desire to possession: Lawrence though his
blood ran hot curbed it from caution, because in modern life
women are a burden and a drag.

This was the trained and tempered Lawrence Hyde, a personage of
great good humour and numitigable egoism. This was the companion
of easy morals with whom Lawrence was on familiar terms. But on
that first white night at Wanhope Lawrence grew dimly aware of
the upheaval of deeper forces, as if his youth were stirring in
its grave. When Laura Clowes smiled at him with her gallant
bearing: when Bernard gripped his hand in wishing him good night:
when Val in the middle of the psychological experiment pierced
him with his grave tired eyes, all sorts of feelings long dormant
and believed to be dead came to life in Lawrence: pity, and
affection, and remorse and shame. "Hang the fellow!" Lawrence
reflected. "He's too like his sister. And Isabel? She is a
child." Whose voice was it that answered, "This is the woman I
have been waiting for all my life?"

And then, turning at bay, he came to a sufficiently cynical
conclusion. "No nonsense!" he said to himself. "Your trouble is
that she's twenty and you're six and thirty, which is a dangerous
age. But you don't want to marry her, and there's no middle
course. Fruit defendu, mon ami: hands off! If you can't be
sensible you'll have to shift out of Wanhope and compromise on
Mrs. Cleve."

The rain held off, and after breakfast--a cheery meal at which
Bernard for the first time for many months appeared dressed and
in a good temper--Lawrence fulfilled the main duty of a guest by
going for a walk.

He came by footbridge and field path into the High Street, where
he was immediately buttonholed by the vicar. Lawrence had a
fixed idea that all priests were hyp