and
of Hilda Lessways mingled with reveries of the insult he had received
and the triumph he had won, and all the confused wonder of the day and
evening engaged his thoughts. He dwelt lovingly on the supreme
disappointment of his career. He fancied what he would have been doing,
and where he would have been then, if his appalling father had not made
it impossible for him to be an architect. He pitied himself. But he
saw the material of happiness ahead, in the faithful execution of his
resolves for self-perfecting. And Hilda had flattered him. Hilda had
given him a new conception of himself... A tiny idea arose in his brain
that there was perhaps some slight excuse for his father's suspicion of
him. After all, he had been secretive. He trampled on that idea, and
it arose again.

He slept very heavily, and woke with a headache. A week elapsed before
his agitation entirely disappeared, and hence before he could realise
how extreme that agitation had been. He was ashamed of having so madly
and wildly abandoned himself to passion.

VOLUME TWO, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

CHALLENGE AND RESPONSE.

Time passed, like a ship across a distant horizon, which moves but which
does not seem to move. One Monday evening Edwin said that he was going
round to Lane End House. He had been saying so for weeks, and
hesitating. He thoroughly enjoyed going to Lane End House; there was no
reason why he should not go frequently and regularly, and there were
several reasons why he should. Yet his visitings were capricious
because his nature was irresolute. That night he went, sticking a hat
carelessly on his head, and his hands deep into his pockets. Down the
slope of Trafalgar Road, in the biting November mist, between the two
rows of gas-lamps that flickered feebly into the pale gloom, came a long
straggling band of men who also, to compensate for the absence of
overcoats, stuck hands deep into pockets, and strode quickly. With
reluctance they divided for the passage of the steam-car, and closed
growling together again on its rear. The potters were on strike, and a
Bursley contingent was returning in embittered silence from a mass
meeting at Hanbridge. When the sound of the steam-car subsided, as the
car dipped over the hill-top on its descent towards Hanbridge, nothing
could be heard but the tramp-tramp of the procession on the road.

Edwin hurried down the side street, and in a moment rang at the front
door of the Orgrea