r
dictate of moral reprobation, of the broad-shouldered sinewy man, whose
look of wiry alertness pictured the previous day's gory gutters.

Dartrey set sharp eyes on him for an instant, bowed; and went.

CHAPTER XXXVI. NESTA AND HER FATHER

The day of Nesta's return was one of a number of late when Victor
was robbed of his walk Westward by Lady Grace Halley, who seduced his
politeness with her various forms of blandishment to take a seat in her
carriage; and she was a practical speaker upon her quarter of the world
when she had him there. Perhaps she was right in saying--though she had
no right to say--that he and she together might have the world under
their feet. It was one of those irritating suggestions which expedite
us up to a bald ceiling, only to make us feel the gas-bladder's tight
extension upon emptiness: It moved him to examine the poor value of his
aim, by tying him to the contemptible means: One estimate involved the
other, whichever came first. Somewhere he had an idea, that would
lift and cleanse all degradations. But it did seem as if he were not
enjoying: things pleasant enough in the passage of them were barren, if
not prickly, in the retrospect.

He sprang out at the head of the park, for a tramp round it, in the
gloom of the girdle of lights, to recover his deadened relish of the
thin phantasmal strife to win an intangible prize. His dulled physical
system asked, as with the sensations of a man at the start from sleep in
the hurrying grip of steam, what on earth he wanted to get, and what was
the substance of his gains: what! if other than a precipitous intimacy,
a deep crumbling over deeper, with a little woman amusing him in remarks
of a whimsical nudity; hardly more. Nay, not more! he said; and at the
end of twenty paces, he saw much more; the campaign gathered a circling
suggestive brilliancy, like the lamps about the winter park; the
Society, lured with glitter, hooked by greed, composed a ravishing
picture; the little woman was esteemed as a serviceable lieutenant; and
her hand was a small soft one, agreeable to fondle--and avaunt! But so
it is in war: we must pay for our allies. What if it had been, that
he and she together, with their united powers...? He dashed the silly
vision aside, as vainer than one of the bubble-empires blown by boys;
and it broke, showing no heart in it. His heart was Nataly's.

Let Colney hint his worst; Nataly bore the strain, always did bear any
strain c