was a brief conversation, introduced by Miss
Honnor, about Mr. Moore's generous proposal to sing at any charitable
concert they might be interested in; and then, as soon as he could,
Lionel said good-bye, left the house, and passed into the outer
world--where the dusk of the December afternoon was coming down over the
far wastes of sea.

CHAPTER XVIII.

AN INVOCATION.

All his vague, wild, impracticable hopes and schemes had suddenly
received their death-blow; but there was nothing worse than that; he
himself (as he imagined) had been dealt no desperate wound. For one
thing, flattered and petted as this young man had been, he was neither
unreasoning nor vain; that a woman should have refused to marry him did
not seem to him a monstrous thing; she was surely within her right in
saying no; while, on the other hand, he was neither going to die of
chagrin nor yet to plan a melodramatic revenge. But the truth was that
he had never been passionately in love with Honnor Cunyngham. Passionate
love he did not much believe in; he associated it with lime-light and
crowded audiences and the odor of gas. Indeed, it might almost be said
that he had been in love not so much with Honnor Cunyngham as with the
condition of life which she represented. He had grown restless and
dissatisfied with his present state; he had been imagining for himself
another sort of existence--but always with her as the central figure of
those fancied realms; he had been dreaming dreams--of which she had
invariably formed part. And now he had been awakened (somewhat abruptly,
perhaps, but that may have been his own fault); and there was nothing
for it but to summon his common-sense to his aid, and to assure himself
that Honnor Cunyngham, at least, was not to blame.

And yet sometimes, in spite of himself, as he smoked a final cigarette
at midnight in those rooms in Piccadilly, a trace of bitterness would
come into his reveries.

"I have been taught my place, that's all," he would say to himself.
"Maurice was right--I had forgotten my catechism. I wanted to play the
gardener's son, or Mordaunt to Lady Mabel; and I can't write poetry, and
I'm not in the House of Commons. I suppose my head was a little
bewildered by the kindness and condescension of those excellent people.
They are glad to welcome you into their rooms--you are a sort of
curiosity--you sing for them--they're very civil for an hour or two--but
you must remember to leave before the f