not
made desperate love to her? A conscientious ass! And yet--the whole
thing was absurd! She was so young! God knew he would be glad to be out
of it. If he stayed he was afraid that he would play the fool. But the
memory of her words: "You have been very sweet to me!" would not leave
him; nor the memory of her face, so puzzled, and reproachful. Yes, if he
stayed he would play the fool! He would be asking her to marry a man
double her age, of no position but that which he had carved for himself,
and without a rap. And he would be asking her in such a way that she
might possibly have some little difficulty in refusing. He would be
letting himself go. And she was only twenty--for all her
woman-of-the-world air, a child! No! He would be useful to her, if
possible, this once, and then clear out!

CHAPTER XXI

When Miltoun left Valleys House he walked in the direction of
Westminster. During the five days that he had been back in London he had
not yet entered the House of Commons. After the seclusion of his
illness, he still felt a yearning, almost painful, towards the movement
and stir of the town. Everything he heard and saw made an intensely
vivid impression. The lions in Trafalgar Square, the great buildings of
Whitehall, filled him with a sort of exultation. He was like a man, who,
after a long sea voyage, first catches sight of land, and stands
straining his eyes, hardly breathing, taking in one by one the lost
features of that face. He walked on to Westminster Bridge, and going to
an embrasure in the very centre, looked back towards the towers.

It was said that the love of those towers passed into the blood. It was
said that he who had sat beneath them could never again be quite the
same. Miltoun knew that it was true--desperately true, of himself. In
person he had sat there but three weeks, but in soul he seemed to have
been sitting there hundreds of years. And now he would sit there no
more! An almost frantic desire to free himself from this coil rose up
within him. To be held a prisoner by that most secret of all his
instincts, the instinct for authority! To be unable to wield authority
because to wield authority was to insult authority. God! It was hard!
He turned his back on the towers; and sought distraction in the faces of
the passers-by.

Each of these, he knew, had his struggle to keep self-respect! Or was it
that they were unconscious of struggle or of self-respect, a