rge.

Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had got
out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the comfort of
woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended; and Nature, who
cannot bear that man should escape her control, avenged herself through
his nerves and a habit of blood to the head. Extravagance, she said,
I cannot have, and when I made this man I made him quite extravagant
enough. For his temperament (not uncommon in a misty climate) had been
born seven feet high; and as a man cannot add a cubit to his stature,
so neither can he take one off. Gregory could not bear that a yellow man
must always remain a yellow man, but trusted by care and attention some
day to see him white. There lives no mortal who has not a philosophy as
distinct from every other mortal's as his face is different from their
faces; but Gregory believed that philosophers unfortunately alien must
gain in time a likeness to himself if he were careful to tell them often
that they had been mistaken. Other men in this Great Britain had the
same belief.

To Gregory's reforming instinct it was a constant grief that he had been
born refined. A natural delicacy would interfere and mar his noblest
efforts. Hence failures deplored by Mrs. Pendyce to Lady Maiden the
night they danced at Worsted Skeynes.

He left his bus near to the flat where Mrs. Bellow lived; with reverence
he made the tour of the building and back again. He had long fixed a
rule, which he never broke, of seeing her only once a fortnight; but to
pass her windows he went out of his way most days and nights. And having
made this tour, not conscious of having done anything ridiculous, still
smiling, and with his hat on his knee, perhaps really happier because he
had not seen her, was driven East, once more passing George Pendyce in
the bow-window of the Stoics' Club, and once more raising on his face a
jeering smile.

He had been back at his rooms in Buckingham Street half an hour when a
club commissionaire arrived with Mr. Paramor's promised letter.

He opened it hastily.

"THE NELSON CLUB,

"TRAFALGAR SQUARE.

"MY DEAR VIGIL,

"I've just come from seeing your ward. An embarrassing complexion is
lent to affairs by what took place last night. It appears that after
your visit to him yesterday afternoon her husband came up to town,
and made his appearance at her flat about eleven o'clock. He was in a
condition bordering on deliri