e footsteps of a cat, let himself out
silently into the empty street and walked with leaden footsteps to his
rooms. It was not until he had reached the seclusion of his study that
the change came. A sudden dull fury burned in his heart. He poured
himself out whisky and drank it neat. Then he seated himself before his
desk and wrote. He did not once hesitate. He did not reread a single
sentence. He dug up the anger and the bitterness from his heart and set
them out in flaming phrases. A sort of lunacy drove him into the
bitterest of extremes. His brain seemed fed with the inspiration of his
suffering, fed with cruel epigrams and biting words. He dragged his
idol down into the dust, scoffed at the piecemeal passion which measures
its gifts, the complacency of an analysed virtue, the sense of
well-living and self-contentment achieved in the rubric of a dry-as-dust
morality. She had failed him, offered him stones instead of bread.--He
signed the letter, blotted it with firm fingers, addressed the envelope,
stamped it and dropped it himself into the pillar box at the corner of
the street. Then he turned wearily homeward, filled with the strange,
almost maniacal satisfaction of the man who has killed the thing he
loves.

CHAPTER XIX

There followed days of sullen battle for Tallente, a battle with luck
against him, with his back to the wall, with despair more than once
yawning at his feet. The house in Charles Street was closed. There had
come no word to him from Jane, no news even of her departure except the
somewhat surprised reply of Parkins, when he had called on the following
afternoon.

"Her ladyship left for Devonshire, sir, by the ten-fifty train."

Tallente went back to the fight with those words ringing in his ears.
He had deliberately torn to pieces his house of refuge. Success or
failure, what did it matter now? Yet with the dogged courage of one
loathing failure for failure's own sake, he flung himself into the
struggle.

On the fifth day after Jane's departure, the thunderbolt fell.
Tallente's article was printed in full and the weaker members of the
Democratic Party shouted at once for his resignation. At a question
cunningly framed by Dartrey, Tallente rose in the House to defend his
position, and acting on the soundest axiom of military tactics, that the
best defence is attack, he turned upon Miller, and with caustic
deliberation exposed the plot framed for his undoing. He threw caution
to the wind