ened as again he fought some certain of those
enormous moments when the whole of life was bound up solely in the
unspeakable necessity to win. Astounding trick of thought from what
beset him! He was alone upon The Strip, in an overcoat, on the way to
forty, not a sound, not a soul, and with that brooding sense of being
upon the edge and threshold of something vast, dark, threatening,
unfathomable.

IV

Down the steep hill flanked by masters' houses. Twilight merging now
into darkness. Boys passing in and out of the gateways. Past Telfer's
which had been his own house. All this youth was preparing for life; all
these houses eternally, generation after generation, pouring boys out
into life as at Shotley iron foundry he had seen molten metal poured out
of a cauldron. And every boy, poured out, imagined he was going to live
his own life. O hapless delusion! Lo, as the same moulds awaited and
confined the metal, so the same moulds awaited and confined the living
stuff. Mysterious conventions, laws, labours; imperceptibly receiving;
implacably binding and shaping. The last day he had come down the steps
of Telfer's--jumped down--how distinctly he remembered it! It was his
own life he was coming down, eagerly jumping down, into.--Well, here he
was, passing those very steps, and whose life was he living? Mabel's?
Old Fortune's? And to what end?

V

Whose life was Nona living?

He had asked her, "Tell me about you and Tybar."

With pitiable gentleness of voice she had approached that quantity which
had been missing from her first statement of her position. And she had
done tribute to her husband's parts with generosity, nay with pride.
"Tony does everything better than any one else." She had said it on that
occasion of their first reencounter; its burthen had been the opening of
her recital of what else she had for him.

"Marko, I think Tony's the most wonderful person that ever was. He does
everything that men do and he does everything best. And everybody
admires him and everybody likes him. You've no idea. You've no idea how
he wins everybody he meets. People will do anything for him. They love
him. Well, you've only got to look at him, haven't you? Or hear him
talk? I think there's never been any one so utterly captivating as Tony
is to look at and to hear."

Most engagingly, with such words, she had presented him: one that passed
through life airily, exquisitely; much fairy-gifted at his cradle with
gifts of