the chairs under the
trees, he made an effort to calmly survey the question in all its
bearings.

It was the most momentous of all human tasks--the choosing of his own
future life-path at the parting of the ways. One of them,
flower-bordered and green with the new-grown grass of life's
spring-time, and the other dry, rugged and rock-strewn--the paths of
inclination and duty: the one leading up to the golden gates of the
Paradise of wedded love, and the other slanting down to the wide
wilderness which he must cross alone, until he passed alone into the
shadows which lay beyond it.

A few days before he had seen himself well on the way to everything that
can make a man's life full and bright and worthy to be lived. He was,
thanks to his father's industry, relieved from all care on the score of
money, and, better still, he had that within him which made him
independent of fortune, perfect health and great abilities, already
well-proved, although he had yet to wait nearly a year for his
twenty-first birthday.

He had great ambitions and the high hopes which go with them. The path
to honour and distinction, even to fame itself, had lain plainly open
before him--and now everything was so different. The sun which he had
thought was only rising was already setting. He knew now that the fruit
which looked so sweet and luscious had the canker-worm feeding on the
core; that the flesh which seemed so healthy was really tainted and
leprous; and that, worse than all, the brightest and sweetest promise of
his life, a promise infinitely sweeter and dearer than even the
fulfilment of his highest material ambition, was now no longer a promise
but a denial, a life-sacrifice demanded, not only by his honour as a
man, but by his love as a lover.

He sat thus thinking until the buzzing of a motor-car woke him from his
day-dream. He looked at his watch, and found that he had about time to
get across the park to Sheen Gate; but he fell to dreaming again on the
way, and when he reached the gate it was closed.

He turned back with the idea of asking a keeper to unlock the gate and
let him out, but after a few strides he halted and sat down again on a
seat. After all, were he to go home, he could not sleep, and it better
suited his mood to keep vigil in the open air than within the four walls
of his room.

And so he passed the night, walking half awake, and then sitting, half
asleep, dimly reviewing this sudden crisis of his fate again an