to Bryanston Square.

CHAPTER XIII

Piers Otway spent ten days in Yorkshire. His father was well, but more
than ever silent, sunk in prophetic brooding; Mrs. Otway kept the
wonted tenor of her life, apprehensive for the purity of the Anglican
Church (assailed by insidious papistry), and monologising at large to
her inattentive husband upon the godlessness of his impenitent old age.

"Piers," said the father one day, with a twinkle in his eye, "I find
myself growing a little deaf. Your stepmother is fond of saying that
Providence sends blessings in disguise, and for once she seems to have
hit upon a truth."

On a glorious night of stars, he walked with his son up to the open
moor. A summer breeze whispered fitfully between the dark-blue vault
and the grey earth; there was a sound of water that leapt from the
bosom of the hills; deep answering to deep, infinite to infinite. After
standing silent for a while, Jerome Otway laid a hand on his
companion's shoulder, and muttered, "The creeds--the dogmas!"

They had two or three long conversations. Most of his time Piers spent
in rambling alone about the moorland, for health and for weariness.
When unoccupied, he durst not be physically idle; the passions that
ever lurked to frenzy him could only be baffled at such times by
vigorous exercise. His cold bath in the early morning was followed by
play of dumb-bells. He had made a cult of physical soundness; he looked
anxiously at his lithe, well-moulded limbs; feebleness, disease, were
the menaces of a supreme hope. Ideal love dwells not in the soul alone,
but in every vein and nerve and muscle of a frame strung to perfect
service. Would he win his heart's desire?--let him be worthy of it in
body as in mind. He pursued to excess the point of cleanliness. With no
touch of personal conceit, he excelled the perfumed exquisite in care
for minute perfections. Not in costume; on that score he was
indifferent, once the conditions of health fulfilled. His inherited
tone was far from perfect; with rage he looked back upon those
insensate years of study, which had weakened him just when he should
have been carefully fortifying his constitution. Only by conflict daily
renewed did he keep in the way of safety; a natural indolence had ever
to be combated; there was always the fear of relapse, such as had
befallen him now and again during his years in Russia; a relapse not
alone in physical training, but from the ideal of chastity. He