ad prompted it, and wound up
with an earnestly expressed hope that Rendel would not at any rate
refuse without having deeply considered it. Belmont, however, asked for
a reply as soon as was consistent with the serious reflection necessary
before taking the step. Rendel looked at the clock. It was half-past
nine. He need not write by post that night, he would send round the
first thing in the morning. That would do as well. At this particular
moment he need do nothing but look the thing in the face. Serious
consideration it should have, undoubtedly, though that was not needed in
order to come to a decision. He was not afraid of gazing at this new
possibility that had just swum into his ken. The moment that comes to
those who are going to achieve, when the door in the wall, showing that
glorious vista beyond, suddenly opens to them, is fraught with an
excited joy which partakes at once of anticipation and of fulfilment,
and is probably never surpassed when in the fulness of time the
opportunities come even too fast on each other's heels, and it has
become a foregone conclusion to take advantage of them. There is no
moment of outlook that has the charm of that first gaze from afar, when
the deep blue distances cloak what is lovely and unlovely alike and
merge them all into one harmonious and inviting mystery. Rendel was in
no hurry for that curtain of mysterious distance to lift: possibility
and success lay behind it. He relished with an exquisite pleasure the
sense of having a dream fulfilled. The crucial moment that comes to
nearly all of us of having to compare the place that others assign to
us in life with that which we imagined we were entitled to occupy, is to
some fraught with the bitterest disappointment. The sense of having
cleared successfully that great gulf which lies between one's own
appreciation of oneself and that of other people is one of rapture.
Rendel had been so short a time married, and had had so few
opportunities during that time of being called upon for any decision,
that it was an entirely new sensation to him to remember suddenly that
this was a thing which concerned somebody else as well as it did
himself. But the thought was nothing but sweet; it meant that there was
somebody now by his side, there always would be, to care for the things
that happened to him; and Rachel, too, would be borne up on the wave of
excitement and rejoicing that was shaking Rendel, to his own surprise,
so strangely ou