ight, was still drawing upon the
apparently inexhaustible reserves of his volition.

"I couldn't have stood that much longer," said Edwin, out on the
landing.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

THE CHAIN BROKEN.

Shortly after eight o'clock Edwin was walking down Trafalgar Road on his
way to the shop. He had bathed, and drunk some tea, and under the
stimulation he felt the factitious vivacity of excessive fatigue. Rain
had fallen quietly and perseveringly during the night, and though the
weather was now fine the streets were thick with black mire.
Paintresses with their neat gloves and their dinner-baskets and their
thin shoes were trudging to work, and young clerks and shop-assistants
and the upper classes of labour generally. Everybody was in a hurry.
The humbler mass had gone long ago. Miners had been in the earth for
hours. Later, and more leisurely, the magnates would pass by.

There were carriages about. An elegant wagonette, streaming with red
favours, dashed down the road behind two horses. Its cargo was a
handful of clay-soiled artisans, gleeful in the naive pride of their
situation, wearing red and shouting red, and hurrahing for the
Conservative candidate.

"Asses!" murmured Edwin, with acrid and savage disdain. "Do you think
he'd drive you anywhere to-morrow?" He walked on a little, and broke
forth again, all to himself: "Of course he's doing it solely in your
interest, isn't he? Why doesn't he pick some of these paintresses out
of the mud and give them a drive?"

He cultivated an unreasoning anger against the men who had so impressed
him at the banquet. He did not try to find answers to their arguments.
He accused them stoutly of wilful blindness, of cowardice, of bullying,
of Pharisaism, and of other sins. He had no wish to hear their defence.
He condemned them, and as it were ordered them to be taken away and
executed. He had a profound conviction that argument was futile, and
that nothing would serve but a pitched battle, in which each fighting
man should go to the poll and put a cross against a name in grim
silence. Argue with these gross self-satisfied fellows about the
turpitude of the artisans! Why, there was scarcely one of them whose
grandfather had not been an artisan! Curse their patriotism! Then he
would begin bits of argument to himself, and stop them, too impatient to
continue... The shilling cigars of those feasters disgusted him... In
such wise his mind ran.