ies of it, immediately, refusing to
accept--with indolent timidity--tradition, custom, hearsay,
convenience, as his guides.--Oh! for some sure answering, some
unimpeachable assurance, some revelation not relative and symbolic, but
absolute, some declaration above all suspicion of cunningly-devised
opportunism, concerning the dealings of the unknown force man calls
God, with the animal man calls man!--And then Richard turned upon
himself contemptuously. For it was childish to cry out thus. The
heavens were dumb above him as the snow-bound earth was dumb beneath.
There was no sign!--Never had been. Never would be, save in the fond
imaginations of religious enthusiasts, crazed by superstition, by
austerities, and hysteria, duped by ignorance, by hypocrites and
quacks.

With long-armed adroitness he reached down and picked up those
light-made, stunted crutches, slipped from his chair and adjusted them.
For a long while he had used them as a matter of course without
criticism or thought. But now they produced in him a swift disgust. His
hands, grasping the lowest crossbar of them, were in such
disproportionate proximity to the floor! For the moment he was disposed
to fling them aside. Then again he turned upon himself with scathing
contempt. For this too was childish. What did the use of them matter,
since, used or not, the fact of his crippled condition remained? And
so, with a renewal of bitterness and active rebellion, lately unknown
to him, he moved away down the great room--past bronze athlete and
marble goddess, past oriental jars, tall as himself, uplifted on the
squat, carven, ebony stands, past strangely-painted, half-fearful,
lacquer cabinets, past porcelain bowls filled with faint sweetness of
dried rose-leaves, bay, lavender, and spice, past trophies of savage
warfare and, hardly less savage, civilised sport, towards the wide
mullion-window of the eastern bay. But just before reaching it, he came
opposite to a picture by Velasquez, set on an easel across the corner
of the room. It represented a hideous and misshapen dwarf, holding a
couple of graceful greyhounds in a leash--an unhappy creature who had
made sport for the household of some Castilian grandee, and whose
gorgeous garments, of scarlet and gold, were ingeniously designed so as
to emphasise the physical degradation of its contorted person. Richard
had come, of late, to take a sombre pleasure in the contemplation of
this picture. The desolate eyes, looki