thought whither
it had led when passing it on his way up from Piccadilly to the club.
But now he entered the mews so as to test the evidence that had been
given, and found that it brought him by a turn close up to the spot
at which he had been described as having been last seen by Erle
and Fitzgibbon. When there he went on, and crossed the street, and
looking back saw the club was lighted up. Then it struck him for the
first time that it was the night of the week on which the members
were wont to assemble. Should he pluck up courage, and walk in among
them? He had not lost his right of entry there because he had been
accused of murder. He was the same now as heretofore,--if he could
only fancy himself to be the same. Why not go in, and have done with
all this? He would be the wonder of the club for twenty minutes, and
then it would all be over. He stood close under the shade of a heavy
building as he thought of this, but he found that he could not do it.
He had known from the beginning that he could not do it. How callous,
how hard, how heartless, must he have been, had such a course been
possible to him! He again repeated the lines to himself--

The reed that grows never more again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

He felt sure that never again would he enter that room, in which no
doubt all those assembled were now talking about him.

As he returned home he tried to make out for himself some plan for
his future life,--but, interspersed with any idea that he could weave
were the figures of two women, Lady Laura Kennedy and Madame Max
Goesler. The former could be nothing to him but a friend; and though
no other friend would love him as she loved him, yet she could not
influence his life. She was very wealthy, but her wealth could be
nothing to him. She would heap it all upon him if he would take
it. He understood and knew that. Taking no pride to himself that
it was so, feeling no conceit in her love, he was conscious of her
devotion to him. He was poor, broken in spirit, and almost without a
future;--and yet could her devotion avail him nothing!

But how might it be with that other woman? Were she, after all that
had passed between them, to consent to be his wife,--and it might be
that she would consent,--how would the world be with him then? He
would be known as Madame Goesler's husband, and have to sit at the
bottom of her table,--and be talked of as the man who had been tried
for the murder