art to man, the power
that makes against equality. From it sprang all the things that
he hated--class shibboleths, ladies, lidies, the game laws, the
Conservative party--all the things that accent the divergencies rather
than the similarities in human nature. Whereas coarseness--But at this
point Herbert Pembroke had scrawled with a blue pencil: "Childish. One
reads no further."

"Morning!" repeated the voice.

Ansell read further, for here was the book of a man who had tried,
however unsuccessfully, to practice what he preached. Mrs. Failing, in
her Introduction, described with delicate irony his difficulties as a
landlord; but she did not record the love in which his name was held.
Nor could her irony touch him when he cried: "Attain the practical
through the unpractical. There is no other road." Ansell was inclined to
think that the unpractical is its own reward, but he respected those who
attempted to journey beyond it. We must all of us go over the mountains.
There is certainly no other road.

"Nice morning!" said the voice.

It was not a nice morning, so Ansell felt bound to speak. He answered:
"No. Why?" A clod of earth immediately struck him on the back. He turned
round indignantly, for he hated physical rudeness. A square man of ruddy
aspect was pacing the gravel path, his hands deep in his pockets. He was
very angry. Then he saw that the clod of earth nourished a blue lobelia,
and that a wound of corresponding size appeared on the pie-shaped bed.
He was not so angry. "I expect they will mind it," he reflected. Last
night, at the Jacksons', Agnes had displayed a brisk pity that made
him wish to wring her neck. Maude had not exaggerated. Mr. Pembroke had
patronized through a sorrowful voice and large round eyes. Till he
met these people he had never been told that his career was a failure.
Apparently it was. They would never have been civil to him if it had
been a success, if they or theirs had anything to fear from him.

In many ways Ansell was a conceited man; but he was never proud of being
right. He had foreseen Rickie's catastrophe from the first, but derived
from this no consolation. In many ways he was pedantic; but his
pedantry lay close to the vineyards of life--far closer than that fetich
Experience of the innumerable tea-cups. He had a great many facts to
learn, and before he died he learnt a suitable quantity. But he never
forgot that the holiness of the heart's imagination can alone classify
t