ial
center; they listened to the hoarse, tragic undernote of the millions
underneath. They made their bow at the reception of a duchess, and spent
a whole Bank Holiday dancing upon Hampstead Heath. These and many other
phases of life they had encountered with an amusement, in Powers' case
partly genuine, in Trowse's wholly tolerant. For all the time they kept
strenuously in view their real end. They wanted to understand the causes
of all that they saw; they wanted to discover laws.

The end of their enterprise came suddenly. A disaster in his family left
Trowse unexpectedly poor. It was necessary for him to take at once some
wage-earning position. The two young men parted, curiously enough,
without regret. Powers, though no sentimentalist, possessed his due
share of the affections, had an innate love for the beautiful, and a
longing for a catholic and universal understanding of his fellows. Where
Trowse would gaze with unmoved face, and pursue his calm calculations,
Powers could only peer with barely veiled horror. They held together
through those three years of unorthodox study, but toward the end of it
they had drawn wide apart. Trowse entered the ranks of his profession a
man of steel, without nerves or sentiment or pity. Powers, with his
fuller understanding of life, had no longer any desire for a regular
career. Possessed of ample means, the necessity for it had never
existed. He left England almost at once, and entered upon a somewhat
restless but comprehensive scheme of travel.

At last, shortly after his return home, one afternoon fate cast into his
way on the Edgware Road the very subject that he sought. It was in the
fringe of a city fog; the sky was heavy with clouds, the pavements were
sloppy with recent rains; the broad thoroughfare was almost deserted
when there glided by him the figure of a woman who held herself with a
distinction oddly at variance with her shabby clothes. There was in her
eyes the look of one in extremity--of a woman who had none of the
ordinary fear of death and who would dare great things to pass from the
evil place in which fate had set her to even a momentary draft from the
cup of life.

Sir Powers Fiske approached her. His eyes held hers--they were bright
with a certain steely radiance. She felt her heart beating fast, the
noise of the traffic beyond seemed to her to come from some distance. He
spoke to her, and her eyes which mirrored dark months lost resentment
after a moment