rue patriotism was a thing only to be found (where
it was never named) in unknown officers of either service, and obscure
civilians engaged in working out their own and the Empire's destinies
in its remote outposts, and upon the high seas.

And, impatient as that thought may have been, how infinitely better
founded and less extravagant it was than the presumptuous arrogance of
these gentlemen, who, by their way of it, were 'Bearing the heat and
burden of the day, here in the busy heart of things--the historic
metropolis of our race!'

VI

Upon three occasions only, in five times that number of years, did I
meet Cynthia--Cynthia Barthrop; and those meetings, I need hardly say,
were accidental.

The promise of Cynthia's youth was to all outward seeming amply
fulfilled. As a matron she would have been notable in any company, by
reason of her sedate beauty, and the dignity of her presence. But her
manner suggested to me that her life had certainly not brought content
to Cynthia; and I gathered from her brother Ernest that the radiant
brightness of nature which had characterised her youth had not
survived her assumption of wifely and maternal cares. Others might
regard this change as part of a natural and inevitable process. In my
eyes also it was inevitable and natural, but not as the result of the
passage of time. For me it was the inevitable outcome of a marriage of
convenience, which was not, for Cynthia, a natural mating. The key to
the changed expression of her beautiful face, and, in particular, of
her eloquent eyes, as I saw it, lay in the fact that she was
unsatisfied; her life, so rich in bloom, had never reached fruition.

One letter I had written to Cynthia, within a few days of her
marriage. And there had been no other communication between us. I
trust that forgetfulness came more easily to her than to me.

My withdrawal from political work I connect with the death of Queen
Victoria, the Coronation of King Edward, and the end of the South
African War. From the same period--a time of the inception of radical,
far-reaching change in England--I date also my final emergence from
that phase of one's existence in which one is still thought of, by
some people at all events, as a young man. The phase has a longer
duration in our time, I think, than in previous generations, because
we have done so much in the direction of abolishing middle age. Grey
hairs were fairly plentiful with me well before the admitted