started for a walk down the
Embankment toward Westminster, intending to end his stroll at Bedford
Square and to ask whether Miss Burgoyne would let him take her to the
theatre. But he did not go so far. When he reached the Abbey, he turned
back and crossed Westminster Bridge and sat down to watch the trails of
smoke behind the Houses of Parliament catch fire with the sunset. The
slender towers were washed by a rain of golden light and licked by
little flickering flames; Somerset House and the bleached gray pinnacles
about Whitehall were floated in a luminous haze. The yellow light poured
through the trees and the leaves seemed to burn with soft fires. There
was a smell of acacias in the air everywhere, and the laburnums were
dripping gold over the walls of the gardens. It was a sweet, lonely kind
of summer evening. Remembering Hilda as she used to be, was doubtless
more satisfactory than seeing her as she must be now--and, after all,
Alexander asked himself, what was it but his own young years that he was
remembering?

He crossed back to Westminster, went up to the Temple, and sat down to
smoke in the Middle Temple gardens, listening to the thin voice of the
fountain and smelling the spice of the sycamores that came out heavily
in the damp evening air. He thought, as he sat there, about a great many
things: about his own youth and Hilda's; above all, he thought of how
glorious it had been, and how quickly it had passed; and, when it had
passed, how little worth while anything was. None of the things he had
gained in the least compensated. In the last six years his reputation
had become, as the saying is, popular. Four years ago he had been called
to Japan to deliver, at the Emperor's request, a course of lectures
at the Imperial University, and had instituted reforms throughout the
islands, not only in the practice of bridge-building but in drainage and
road-making. On his return he had undertaken the bridge at Moorlock,
in Canada, the most important piece of bridge-building going on in
the world,--a test, indeed, of how far the latest practice in bridge
structure could be carried. It was a spectacular undertaking by reason
of its very size, and Bartley realized that, whatever else he might do,
he would probably always be known as the engineer who designed the great
Moorlock Bridge, the longest cantilever in existence. Yet it was to him
the least satisfactory thing he had ever done. He was cramped in every
way by a nig