as amazing that she could have this
feeling; yet there was no mistake. Her manner to Sylvia just now had
been almost dangerously changed; there had been a queer cold impatience
in her look, frightening from one who but three months ago had been
so affectionate. And, going away, she had whispered, with that old
trembling-up at him, as if offering to be kissed: "I may come, mayn't I?
And don't be angry with me, please; I can't help it." A monstrous
thing at his age to let a young girl love him--compromise her future! A
monstrous thing by all the canons of virtue and gentility! And yet--what
future?--with that nature--those eyes--that origin--with that father,
and that home? But he would not--simply must not think!

Nevertheless, he showed the signs of thought, and badly; for after
dinner Sylvia, putting her hand on his forehead, said:

"You're working too hard, Mark. You don't go out enough."

He held those fingers fast. Sylvia! No, indeed he must not think! But he
took advantage of her words, and said that he would go out and get some
air.

He walked at a great pace--to keep thought away--till he reached the
river close to Westminster, and, moved by sudden impulse, seeking
perhaps an antidote, turned down into that little street under the big
Wren church, where he had never been since the summer night when he lost
what was then more to him than life. There SHE had lived; there was the
house--those windows which he had stolen past and gazed at with such
distress and longing. Who lived there now? Once more he seemed to see
that face out of the past, the dark hair, and dark soft eyes, and sweet
gravity; and it did not reproach him. For this new feeling was not a
love like that had been. Only once could a man feel the love that passed
all things, the love before which the world was but a spark in a draught
of wind; the love that, whatever dishonour, grief, and unrest it might
come through, alone had in it the heart of peace and joy and honour.
Fate had torn that love from him, nipped it off as a sharp wind nips off
a perfect flower. This new feeling was but a fever, a passionate fancy,
a grasping once more at Youth and Warmth. Ah, well! but it was real
enough! And, in one of those moments when a man stands outside himself,
seems to be lifted away and see his own life twirling, Lennan had a
vision of a shadow driven here and there; a straw going round and round;
a midge in the grip of a mad wind. Where was the home of this