was his one spoken tribute to their friendship; and both, with the
nervousness of honest men in the presence of emotion, hastened to change
the subject.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE FURTHER BRINK

Wratislaw left betimes the next morning, and a long day faced Lewis with
every hour clamouring for a decision. George would be back by noon, and
before his return he must seek quiet and the chances of reflection. He
was happy with a miserable fluctuating happiness. Of a sudden his
horizon was enlarged, but as he gazed it seemed to narrow again. His
mind was still unplumbed; somewhere in its depths might lie the
shrinking and unwillingness which would bind him to the dreary present.

He went out to the autumn hills and sought the ridge which runs for
miles on the lip of the glen. It was a grey day, with snow waiting in
cloud-banks in the north sky and a thin wind whistling through the
pines. The scene matched his humour. He was in love for the moment
with the stony and stormy in life. He hungered morbidly for
ill-fortune, something to stamp out the ease in his soul, and weld him
into the form of a man.

He had got his chance and the rest lay with himself. It was a chance of
high adventure, a great mission, a limitless future. At the thought the
old fever began to rise in his blood. The hot, clear smell of rock and
sand, the brown depths of the waters, the far white peaks running up
among the stars, all spoke to him with the long-remembered call. Once
more he should taste life, and, alert in mind and body, hold up his chin
among his fellows. It would be a contest of wits, and for all his
cowardice this was not the contest he shrank from.

And then there came back on him, like a flood, the dumb misery of
incompetence which had weighed on heart and brain. The hatred of the
whole struggling, sordid crew, all the cant and ugliness and ignorance
of a mad world, his weakness in the face of it, his fall from common
virtue, his nerveless indolence--all stung him like needle points, till
he cried out in agony. Anything to deliver his soul from such a
bondage, and in his extreme bitterness his mind closed with Wratislaw's
offer.

He felt--and it is a proof of his weakness--a certain nameless feeling
of content when he had once forced himself into the resolution. Now at
least he had found a helm and a port to strain to. As his fancy dwelt
upon the mission and drew airy pictures of the land, he found to his
delight a boyish enthusiasm