ully silly, a circumstance almost incredibly sordid and futile.

Her humiliation was his humiliation, for had he not chosen her to be his
companion for life? Had he not at this time, when the full
responsibility of manhood was placed on every man, had he not chosen as
the mother of his children, a moral weakling?

He locked the letter up in his desk and paced the length of the room
once or twice. Then he threw himself into a chair and, clasping his head
in his hands, remained there motionless. Could he be the same man who
had a few days ago, of his own free will, without any compulsion,
without any kind of necessity, offered himself for life to a girl of
whom he knew absolutely nothing, except that she had had a miserable
upbringing and an heredity that he could not respect? Was it her slender
beauty, her girlishness, that had made him so passionately pitiful?

From an ordinary man this action would have been folly, but from him it
was an offence! A very great offence, now, in these times. On the desk
lay some pages of notes--notes of a course of public lectures he was
about to give, lectures on the responsibility of citizenship, in which
he was going to make a strong appeal to his audience for a more
conscious philosophy of life. He was going to urge the necessity for
greater reverence for education. He was going to speak not only of the
burden of Empire, but of the new burden, the burden of Democracy, a
Democracy that is young, independent, and feeling its way. He was going
to speak of the true meaning of a free Democracy, no chaotic meaningless
freedom, but the sane and ordered freedom of educated men, Democracy
open-eyed and training itself, like a strong man, to run a race for some
far-off, some desired goal to which "all creation moves."

He was in these lectures going to pose not only as a practical man but
as a preacher, one of those who "point the way"; and meanwhile he had
bound himself to a girl who not only would be unable to grasp the
meaning of any strenuous moral effort, but who would have to be herself
guarded from every petty temptation that came in her way. He was (so he
said to himself, as he groaned in his spirit) one of those many
preachers who, in all ages, have talked of moral progress, and who have
missed the road that they themselves have pointed out!

He was fiercely angry with himself because he had called the emotion
that he had felt for Gwendolen in her mischance a "passionate pity." It