arm
violently with her hand.

"Jeff," said she passionately, "you're a fool. You've still got your
youth and you won't use it. And the world looks like this--" she glanced
up at the radiant sky. "Even in Addington, the moon is after us trying
to seduce us to the old pleasures. You've got youth. Use it. For God's
sake, use it."

Now she did go up the steps and having rung the bell for her, ignoring
the grim knocker that looked as if it would take more than one summons
to get past its guard, Jeff told the man to drive back for Mr. Moore.
The car had gone, and still Madame Beattie rang. She knew and Jeffrey
suspected suddenly that Esther was paying her out for illicit roaming.
Suddenly Madame Beattie raised her voice and called twice:

"Esther! Esther!"

The sound echoed in the silent street, appallingly to one who knew what
Addington streets were and what proprieties lined them. Then the door
did open. Jeffrey fancied the smooth-faced maid had slipped the bolt.
Esther, from what he knew of her, was not by to face the music. He heard
the door shut cautiously and walked away, but not to go immediately
home. What did Madame Beattie mean by telling him to use his youth? All
he wanted was to hold commerce with the earth and dig hard enough to
keep himself tired so that he might sleep. For since he had come out of
prison he was every day more subject to this besetment of recalling the
past. It was growing upon him that he had always made wrong choices.
Youth, what seemed to him through the vista of vanished time a childhood
even, when he was but little over twenty, had been a delirium of
expectation in a world that was merely a gay-coloured spot where, if you
were reasonably fit, as youth should be, you could always snatch the
choicest fruit from the highest bough. Then he had met Esther, and the
world stopped being a playground and became an ordered pageant, and he
was the moving power, trying to make it move faster or more lightly, to
please Esther who was sitting in front to see it move, and who was of a
decided mind in pageants. It was always Esther who was to be pleased.
These things he had not thought of willingly during his imprisonment,
because it was necessary not to think, lest the discovery of the right
causes that brought him there should turn his brain. But now he had
leisure and freedom and a measure of solitude, and it began to strike
him that heretofore, being in the pageant and seeing it move, he had
not e