ll
squalid moral muddle that Belinda Scotts call "life."

All this smothered the Warden's shirt-front and trickled sideways into
the softer part of that article of his dress.

For the first few moments his power of thinking failed him. He was
conscious only of his hands on her waist and shoulder, of the warmth of
her dark hair against his face. He could feel her heart thumping,
thumping in her slender body against his.

A knock came at the door.

The Warden came to himself. He released the weeping girl gently and
walked to the door.

He opened it, holding it in his hand. "What is it, Robinson?" he asked,
for he had for the moment forgotten that it was dinner time, and that a
guest was expected.

"Mr. Boreham is in the drawing-room, sir," said the old servant very
meekly, for he met the narrow eyes fixed coldly upon him.

"Very well," said the Warden, and he closed the door again.

Then he turned round and looked at Gwendolen Scott. She was standing
exactly where he had left her, standing with her hands clutching at a
little pocket-handkerchief and her letter. She was waiting. Her wet
eyelashes almost rested on her flushed cheeks. Her lips were slightly
swollen. She was not crying, she was still and silent. She was
waiting--her conceit for the moment gone--she was waiting to know from
him what was going to become of her. Her whole drooping attitude was
profoundly humble. The humility of it gave Middleton a strange pang of
pain and pleasure.

The way in which the desire for power expresses itself in a man or woman
is the supreme test of character. The weak fritter away on nothings the
driving force of this priceless instinct; this instinct that has raised
us from primeval slime to the mastery of the world. The weak waste it,
it seems to slip through their fingers and vanish. Only the strong can
bend this spiritual energy to the service of an important issue, and the
strongest of all do this unconsciously, so that He, who is supreme
Master of the souls of men, could say, "Why callest thou _Me_ good?"

The Warden in his small sphere of academic life showed himself to be one
of the strong sort. His mind was analytical rather than constructive,
but among all the crowded teaching staff of Oxford only one other
man--and he, too, now the head of a famous college--had given as much of
himself to his pupils. Indeed, so much had the Warden given, that he had
left little for himself. His time and his extraordinarily wide