position, anything's rotten."

At that encouraging word, the flood-gates gave way in Lady Summerhay, and
she poured forth a stream of words.

"Oh, my dear, can't you pull up? I've seen so many of these affairs go
wrong. It really is not for nothing that law and conventions are what
they are--believe me! Really, Bryan, experience does show that the
pressure's too great. It's only once in a way--very exceptional people,
very exceptional circumstances. You mayn't think now it'll hamper you,
but you'll find it will--most fearfully. It's not as if you were a
writer or an artist, who can take his work where he likes and live in a
desert if he wants. You've got to do yours in London, your whole career
is bound up with society. Do think, before you go butting up against it!
It's all very well to say it's no affair of anyone's, but you'll find it
is, Bryan. And then, can you--can you possibly make her happy in the
long-run?"

She stopped at the expression on his face. It was as if he were saying:
"I have left your world. Talk to your fellows; all this is nothing to
me."

"Look here, Mother: you don't seem to understand. I'm devoted--devoted
so that there's nothing else for me."

"How long will that last, Bryan? You mean bewitched."

Summerhay said, with passion:

"I don't. I mean what I said. Good-night!" And he went to the door.

"Won't you stay to dinner, dear?"

But he was gone, and the full of vexation, anxiety, and wretchedness came
on Lady Summerhay. It was too hard! She went down to her lonely dinner,
desolate and sore. And to the book on dreams, opened beside her plate,
she turned eyes that took in nothing.

Summerhay went straight home. The lamps were brightening in the
early-autumn dusk, and a draughty, ruffling wind flicked a yellow leaf
here and there from off the plane trees. It was just the moment when
evening blue comes into the colouring of the town--that hour of fusion
when day's hard and staring shapes are softening, growing dark,
mysterious, and all that broods behind the lives of men and trees and
houses comes down on the wings of illusion to repossess the world--the
hour when any poetry in a man wells up. But Summerhay still heard his
mother's, "Oh, Bryan!" and, for the first time, knew the feeling that his
hand was against everyone's. There was a difference already, or so it
seemed to him, in the expression of each passer-by. Nothing any more
would be a matter of course; and