he sky. It was the chief recreation of this little
society.

Gregory worked till nearly three, and walked out to a bun-shop, where he
lunched off a piece of cake and a cup of coffee. He took an omnibus, and
getting on the top, was driven West with a smile on his face and his hat
in his hand. He was thinking of Helen Bellew. It had become a habit
with him to think of her, the best and most beautiful of her sex--a habit
in which he was growing grey, and with which, therefore, he could not
part. And those women who saw him with his uncovered head smiled, and
thought:

'What a fine-looking man!'

But George Pendyce, who saw him from the window of the Stoics' Club,
smiled a different smile; the sight of him was always a little unpleasant
to George.

Nature, who had made Gregory Vigil a man, had long found that he had got
out of her hands, and was living in celibacy, deprived of the comfort of
woman, even of those poor creatures whom he befriended; and Nature, who
cannot bear that man should escape her control, avenged herself through
his nerves and a habit of blood to the head. Extravagance, she said, I
cannot have, and when I made this man I made him quite extravagant
enough. For his temperament (not uncommon in a misty climate) had been
born seven feet high; and as a man cannot add a cubit to his stature, so
neither can he take one off. Gregory could not bear that a yellow man
must always remain a yellow man, but trusted by care and attention some
day to see him white. There lives no mortal who has not a philosophy as
distinct from every other mortal's as his face is different from their
faces; but Gregory believed that philosophers unfortunately alien must
gain in time a likeness to himself if he were careful to tell them often
that they had been mistaken. Other men in this Great Britain had the
same belief.

To Gregory's reforming instinct it was a constant grief that he had been
born refined. A natural delicacy would interfere and mar his noblest
efforts. Hence failures deplored by Mrs. Pendyce to Lady Maiden the
night they danced at Worsted Skeynes.

He left his bus near to the flat where Mrs. Bellow lived; with reverence
he made the tour of the building and back again. He had long fixed a
rule, which he never broke, of seeing her only once a fortnight; but to
pass her windows he went out of his way most days and nights. And having
made this tour, not conscious of having done anything ridiculous, stil