y and thought of the unbroken
solitude of his college rooms, of Senancour's flight from human kind,
of the uselessness of all friendship, the absurdity of all effort, and
could hardly persuade himself to get up and face a futile world, which
had, moreover, the enormous disadvantage for the moment of being a new
one.

Convention, however, is master even of an Obermann. That prototype of
all the disillusioned had to cut himself adrift from the society of the
eagles on the Dent du Midi, to go and hang, like any other ridiculous
mortal, on the Paris law courts. Langham, whether he liked it or not,
had to face the parsonic breakfast and the parsonic day.

He had just finished dressing when the sound of a girl's voice drew him
to the window, which was open. In the garden stood Rose, on the edge of
the sunk fence dividing the Rectory domain from the cornfield. She was
stooping forward playing with Robert's Dandie Dinmont. In one hand she
held a mass of poppies, which showed a vivid scarlet against her blue
dress; the other was stretched out seductively to the dog leaping round
her. A crystal buckle flashed at her waist; the sunshine caught the
curls of auburn hair, the pink cheek, the white moving hand, the lace
ruffles at her throat and wrist. The lithe, glittering figure stood
thrown out against the heavy woods behind, the gold of the cornfield,
the blues of the distance. All the gayety and color which is as truly
representative of autumn as the gray languor of a September mist had
passed into it.

Langham stood and watched, hidden, as he thought, by the curtain, till
a gust of wind shook the casement window beside him, and threatened to
blow it in upon him. He put out his hand perforce to save it, and the
slight noise caught Rose's ear. She looked up; her smile vanished. 'Go
down, Dandie,' she said severely, and walked quickly into the house with
as much dignity as nineteen is capable of.

At breakfast the Elsmeres found their guest a difficulty. But they
also, as we know, had expected it. He was languor itself; none of their
conversational efforts succeeded; and Rose, studying him out the corners
of her eyes, felt that it would be of no use even to torment so strange
and impenetrable a being. Why on earth should people come and visit
their friends, if they could not keep up even the ordinary decent
pretences of society?

Robert had to go off to some clerical business afterward and Langham
wandered out into the garden