of trotting horses enlivened
with a few motors and motor-buses, he used to run down on his
motor-cycle to visit Marguerite. It was inevitable that he should think
upon what had happened to him in the meantime. His body felt, honestly,
no older. The shoulders had broadened, the moustache was fiercer, there
were semicircular furrows under the eyes; but he was as slim and agile
as ever, and did his morning exercises as regularly as he took his bath.
More, he was still, somehow, the youthful prodigy who had won the
biggest competition of modern years while almost an infant. He was still
known as such, regarded as such, greeted as such, referred to as such at
intervals in the Press. His fame in his own world seemed not to have
deteriorated. But disappointment had slowly, imperceptibly, eaten into
him. He was far off the sublime heights of Sir Hugh Corver, though he
met Sir Hugh apparently as an equal on the Council of the Royal Society
of British Architects. Work had not surged in upon him. He had not been
able to pick and choose among commissions. He had never won another
competition. Again and again his hopes had been horribly defeated in
these ghastly enterprises, of which two were still pending. He was a man
of one job. And a quarter of his professional life had slipped behind
him! His dreams were changed. Formerly he had dreamed in architectural
forms; now he dreamed in percentages. His one job had been enormous and
lucrative, but he had lived on it for a decade, and it was done. And
outside it he had earned probably less than twelve hundred pounds.

And if the job had been enormous, his responsibilities were likewise
enormous. Home expenses with an increasing family; establishment
expenses; a heavy insurance! Slavery to habits! The common story,
without the slightest originality in it. The idea recurred continually:
it was the fault of Lois, of that embodied, implacable instinct which
Lois was! And it was the fault of circumstance, of the structure of
society, of existence itself. And it was his fault too. And the whole of
the blame would be his if disaster came. Imagine those kids with the
perambulator and the doll's perambulator--imagine them in an earthquake!
He could see no future beyond, perhaps, eight months ahead. No, he could
not! Of course his stepfather was a sure resource. But he could not
conceive himself confessing failure to his stepfather or to anybody on
earth. Yet, if he did not very soon obtain more wo