shed these people to regard him as a kind
of official friend, to advise and settle differences; yet, shrewder
than he, they considered him as an enemy, who lived on their mistakes
and the collapse of their social relationships.

There remained his duty to his wife and children, and this rendered
the problem infinitely perplexing.

Why should he punish others because of his love for his children; or,
again, why should his children suffer for his scruples? Yet it was
clear that, unless fortune permitted him to accomplish some notable
yet honourable arrest, he would either have to cheat and tyrannise
with his colleagues or leave the force. And what employment is
available for a discharged policeman?

As he went systematically from house to house the consideration of
these things marred the normal progress of his dreams. Conscious as
he was of the stars and the great widths of heaven that made the
world so small, he nevertheless felt that his love for his family and
the wider love that determined his honour were somehow intimately
connected with this greatness of the universe rather than with the
world of little streets and little motives, and so were not lightly
to be put aside. Yet, how can one measure one love against another
when all are true?

When the door of Gurneys', the moneylenders, opened to his touch,
and drew him abruptly from his speculations, his first emotion was a
quick irritation that chance should interfere with his thoughts. But
when his lantern showed him that the lock had been tampered with,
his annoyance changed to a thrill of hopeful excitement. What if
this were the way out? What if fate had granted him compromise, the
opportunity of pitting his official virtue against official crime,
those shadowy forces in the existence of which he did not believe,
but which lay on his life like clouds?

He was not a physical coward, and it seemed quite simple to him to
creep quietly through the open door into the silent office without
waiting for possible reinforcements. He knew that the safe, which
would be the, natural goal of the presumed burglars, was in Mr.
Gurney's private office beyond, and while he stood listening intently
he seemed to hear dim sounds coming from the direction of that room.
For a moment he paused, frowning slightly as a man does when he is
trying to catalogue an impression. When he achieved perception, it
came oddly mingled with recollections of the little tragedies of his
children