r Theophile
Gautier were in the right of it, would remain a doubt to all time--that
was all Raeburn could get out of him. After which the Hebraist friend of
course had turned his back on the offender, and there was an end of it.

That incident, however, had belonged to a stage in his past life, a
stage marked by a certain prolonged tumult of the senses, on which he
now looked back with great composure. That tumult had found vent in
other adventures more emphatic a good deal than the adventure of the
keeper's wife. He believed that one or two of them had been not unknown
to Raeburn.

Well, that was done with! His mother's death--that wanton stupidity on
the part of fate--and the shock it had somehow caused him, had first
drawn him out of the slough of a cheap and facile pleasure on which he
now looked back with contempt. Afterwards, his two years of travel, and
the joys at once virile and pure they had brought with them, joys of
adventure, bodily endurance, discovery, together with the intellectual
stimulus which comes of perpetual change, of new heavens, new seas, new
societies, had loosened the yoke of the flesh and saved him from
himself. The deliverance so begun had been completed at home, by the
various chances and opportunities which had since opened to him a solid
and tempting career in that Labour movement his mother had linked him
with, without indeed ever understanding either its objects or its men.
The attack on capital now developing on all sides, the planning of the
vast campaign, and the handling of its industrial troops, these things
had made the pursuit of women look insipid, coupled as they were with
the thrill of increasing personal success. Passion would require to
present itself in new forms, if it was now to take possession of him
again.

As to his relation to Raeburn, he well remembered that when, after that
long break in his life, he and Aldous had met casually again, in London
or elsewhere, Aldous had shown a certain disposition to forget the old
quarrel, and to behave with civility, though not with friendliness. As
to Wharton he was quite willing, though at the same time he had gone
down to contest West Brookshire, and, above all, had found himself in
the same house as Aldous Raeburn's betrothed, with an even livelier
sense than usual of the excitement to be got out of mere living.

No doubt when Raeburn heard that story of the library--if he had heard
it--he recognised in it the man and the