limp, his heavy head carried low.
His instincts were conservative, as has been already mentioned. He was
suspicious of newcomers. And whoever liked this particular newcomer,
Madame de Vallorbes, he was sorry to say--and on more than one occasion
he said it with quite inconvenient distinctness--he did not.

CHAPTER VI

IN WHICH DICKIE TRIES TO RIDE AWAY FROM HIS OWN SHADOW, WITH SUCH
SUCCESS AS MIGHT HAVE BEEN ANTICIPATED

That same morning Richard was up and out early. Fog had followed on the
evening's rain, and at sunrise still shrouded all the landscape.

"Let her ladyship know I breakfast at the stables and shan't be in
before luncheon," he had said to Powell while settling himself in the
saddle. Then, followed by a groom, he fared forth. The house vanished
phantom-like behind him, and the clang of the iron gates as they swung
to was muffled by the heavy atmosphere, while he rode on by invisible
ways across an invisible land, hemmed in, close-encompassed, passed
upon, by the chill, ashen whiteness of the fog.

And for the cold silence and blankness surrounding him Richard was
grateful. It was restful--after a grim fashion--and he welcomed rest,
having passed a but restless night. For Dickie had been the victim of
much travail of spirit. His imagination vexed him, pricking up
slumbering lusts of the flesh. His conscience vexed him likewise,
suggesting that his attitude had not been pure cousinly; and this
shamed him, since he was still singularly unspotted from the world,
noble modesties and decencies still paramount in him. He was keenly,
some might say mawkishly, sensible of the stain and dishonour of
turning, even involuntarily and passingly, covetous glances upon
another man's goods. In sensation and apprehension he had lived at
racing pace during the last few days. That hour in the Long Gallery
last night had been the climax. The gates of paradise had opened before
him. And, since opposites of necessity imply their opposites, the gates
of hell had opened likewise. It appeared to Dickie that the great
poets, and painters, and musicians, the great lovers even, had nothing
left to tell him--for he knew. Knew, moreover, that his Eden had come
to him with the angel of the fiery sword that "turneth every way"
standing at the threshold of it--knew, yet further, as he had never
known before, the immensity of the difficulties, disabilities,
humiliations, imposed on him by his deformity. Bitterly, nakedly, he