of
his life?

As to the effort before him, he felt toward it as a man of weak
unpractised muscle who endeavors with straining to raise a physical
weight. He would make the effort, but it would tax his whole strength.
As he strolled along the down, dismally smoking and pondering, he made
himself contemplate the then and now--taking stock, as it were, of his
life. In this truth-compelling darkness, apart from the stimulus of his
mother's tyranny, he felt himself to be two men: one in love with Diana,
the other in love with success and political ambition, and money as the
agent and servant of both. He had never for one moment envisaged the
first love--Diana--as the alternative to, or substitute for the second
love--success. As he had conceived her up to twenty-four hours before,
Diana was to be, indeed, one of the chief elements and ministers of
success. In winning her, he was, in fact, to make the best of both
worlds. A certain cool analytic gift that he possessed put all this
plainly before him. And now it must be a choice between Diana and all
those other desirable things.

Take the poverty first. What would it amount to? He knew approximately
what was Diana's fortune. He had meant--with easy generosity--to leave
it all in her hands, to do what she would with. Now, until his mother
came to her senses, they must chiefly depend upon it. What could he add
to it? He had been called to the Bar, but had never practised.
Directorships no doubt, he might get, like other men; though not so
easily now, if it was to be known that his mother meant to make a pauper
of him. And once a man whom he had met in political life, who was no
doubt ignorant of his private circumstances, had sounded him as to
whether he would become the London correspondent of a great American
paper. He had laughed then, good-humoredly, at the proposal. Perhaps the
thing might still be open. It would mean a few extra hundreds.

He laughed again as he thought of it, but not good-humoredly. The whole
thing was so monstrous! His mother had close on twenty thousand a year!
For all her puritanical training she liked luxury--of a certain
kind--and had brought up her son in it. Marsham had never gambled or
speculated or raced. It was part of his democratic creed and his Quaker
Ancestry to despise such modes of wasting money, and to be scornful of
the men who indulged in them. But the best of housing, service, and
clothes; the best shooting, whether in England or