r son who, after years of uncongenial drudgery
had emerged, tough, stringy, professional, his boyish dreams dead and
his boyish tastes atrophied; a useful hard-working, clear-sighted member
of society. And there was truth in this conception of himself. There was
truth, too, in Madame von Marwitz's probe. He had more than the normal
English sensitiveness where ideals were concerned and more than the
normal English instinct for a protective literalness. He didn't intend
that anybody should lay their hand on his heart and tell him of lofty
aims that it would have made him feel awkward to look at by himself; his
fastidiousness was far from commonplace, and so were his disdains; they
made cheap successes and cheap ambitions impossible to him. He would
never make a fortune out of the law; yet already he was distinguished
among the younger men at the bar. With nothing of the air of a paladin
he brought into the courts a flavour of classic calm and courtesy. He
was punctiliously fair. He never frightened or bullied or confused. His
impartiality could become alarming at times to his own clients, and
shady cases passed him by. Everybody respected Gregory Jardine and a
good many people disliked him. A few old friends, comrades at Eton and
Oxford, were devoted to him and looked upon him, in spite of his
reputation for almost merciless common-sense, as still potentially
Quixotic. As a boy he had been exceptionally tender-hearted; but now he
was hard, or thought himself so. He had no vanity and looked upon his
own resolution and dignity as the heritage of all men worth their salt;
in consequence he was inclined to theoretic severity towards the
worsted. The sensitiveness of youth had steeled itself in irony; he was
impatient of delusions and exaltations, and scornful of the shambling,
shame-faced motives that moved so many of the people who came under his
observation.

Yet, leaning on the iron railing, his gaze softening to a grave,
peaceful smile as he looked over the vast, vaporous scene, laced with
its moving and motionless lines of light, it was this, and its
mysteries, its delicacies, its reticent radiance, that expressed him
more truly than the commonplaces of the room behind him, accurately as
these symbolized the activities of his life. The boy and youth,
emotional and poetic, dreamy if also shrewdly humorous, still survived
in a sub-conscious region of his nature, an Atlantis sunken beneath the
traffic of the surface; and, w