rtance to himself of
Drake's news.

"It concerns me," he began to reiterate aloud. "It concerns me--me--me.
It's useless to think that it doesn't. It concerns me."

Then a more ghastly suggestion whispered itself. How should he ever know
that he was not primarily responsible? The idea came over him with
sickening intensity; and upright now he saw in the cracked mirrors of
the cab a face blanched, a forehead clammy with sweat, and over his
shoulder like a goblin the wraith of Lily. It was horrible to see so
distorted that beautiful memory which time had etherealized out of a
reality, until of her being nothing had endured but a tenuous image of
earliest love. Now under the shock of her degradation he must be dragged
back by this goblin to face his responsibility. He must behold again
close at hand her shallow infidelity. He must assure himself of her
worthlessness, hammer into his brain that from the beginning she had
merely trifled with him. This must be established for the sake of his
conscience. Where the devil was this driver going?

"I told you down the Embankment," Michael shouted through the trap.

"I can't go down the Embankment before I gets there, can I, sir?" the
cabman asked reproachfully.

Michael closed the trap. He was abashed when he perceived they were
still only in Fleet Street. Why had he gone to The Oxford to-night? Why
had he spoken to Drake? Why had he not stayed at Wychford? Why had he
not returned to London with the others? Such regrets were valueless. It
was foredoomed that Lily should come into his life again. Yet there was
no reason why she should. There was no reason at all. Men could hardly
be held responsible for the fall of women, unless themselves had upon
their souls the guilt of betrayal or desertion. It was ridiculous to
argue that he must bother because at eighteen he had loved her, because
at eighteen he had thought she was worthy of being loved. No doubt the
Orient Promenade was the sequel of kissing objectionable actors in the
back gardens of West Kensington. Yet the Orient Promenade? That was a
damnable place. The Orient Promenade? He remembered her kisses. Sitting
in this cab, he was kissing her now. She had ridden for hours deep in
his arms. Not Oxford could cure this relapse into the past. Every spire
and every tower had crashed to ruins around his staid conceptions, so
that they too presently fell away. Four years of plastic calm were
unfashioned, and she was again beside