t. And sorrowful sweet birds
were tuning their little autumn pipes, blowing into them fragments of
Spring odes to Liberty.

Courtier thought of Miltoun and his mistress. By what a strange fate had
those two been thrown together; to what end was their love coming? The
seeds of grief were already sown, what flowers of darkness, or of tumult
would come up? He saw her again as a little, grave, considering child,
with her soft eyes, set wide apart under the dark arched brows, and the
little tuck at the corner of her mouth that used to come when he teased
her. And to that gentle creature who would sooner die than force anyone
to anything, had been given this queer lover; this aristocrat by birth
and nature, with the dried fervent soul, whose every fibre had been bred
and trained in and to the service of Authority; this rejecter of the
Unity of Life; this worshipper of an old God! A God that stood, whip
in hand, driving men to obedience. A God that even now Courtier could
conjure up staring at him from the walls of his nursery. The God his
own father had believed in. A God of the Old Testament, knowing neither
sympathy nor understanding. Strange that He should be alive still; that
there should still be thousands who worshipped Him. Yet, not so very
strange, if, as they said, man made God in his own image! Here indeed
was a curious mating of what the philosophers would call the will to
Love, and the will to Power!

A soldier and his girl came and sat down on a bench close by. They
looked askance at this trim and upright figure with the fighting face;
then, some subtle thing informing them that he was not of the disturbing
breed called officer, they ceased to regard him, abandoning themselves
to dumb and inexpressive felicity. Arm in arm, touching each other, they
seemed to Courtier very jolly, having that look of living entirely in
the moment, which always especially appealed to one whose blood ran too
fast to allow him to speculate much upon the future or brood much over
the past.

A leaf from the bough above him, loosened by the sun's kisses, dropped,
and fell yellow at his feet. The leaves were turning very soon?

It was characteristic of this man, who could be so hot over the lost
causes of others, that, sitting there within half an hour of the final
loss of his own cause, he could be so calm, so almost apathetic.
This apathy was partly due to the hopelessness, which Nature had long
perceived, of trying to make him feel