"Very bewildering and very difficult. I answered that question earlier in the evening. We talk in a circle. To do so is a waste of time. Good-night!" Another question was trembling on Montrose's lips, but he refrained from putting it, and with a silent hand-shake departed slowly. Accustomed to come and go at will in this house, which was more a home to him than any habitation he had known, the young man descended the stairs and let himself out into the silent square. The balmy summer night was brilliant with stars, and charged with some mysterious healing influence, which soothed and relaxed his weary nerves. On all sides the great city was yet awake and alive with people, each one intent upon the realisation of his or her desire. But here, isolated from the roaring thoroughfares, the quadrangle was comparatively lonely and dark, as the passers-by were few and the lights widely scattered. The central gardens, with their trees and shrubs and turf and flowers, slept within the rusty iron railings, speaking every now and then as a wandering breeze woke the leaves to sigh and whisper. The hurrying steps of a wayfarer, the measured heavy tread of a policeman, the murmur of distant life: Montrose heard these things without hearing as it were, as without seeing he stared at the silent cats gliding through the shadows. He walked along, wrapped up in his own thoughts, seeking mechanically his rooms and bed. Notwithstanding his accession to considerable wealth, the fortunate youth had but slightly changed his mode of living. He enjoyed better lodgings, better clothes, more nourishing food, and was free from the obligation of compulsory work to exist. But he still lived in unfashionable Bloomsbury, a quiet, inexpensive, and somewhat recluse life, not seeking to enter what is known as society. With his good looks and undeniable talents and newly acquired wealth, he would have been welcome to the gay throng who flutter in the sunshine of pleasure. But there was nothing in Montrose which responded to such aimless allurements. Once or twice friends had taken him to this house and that, where the butterflies gathered, and on this particular night Eberstein had induced him to dine at Mrs. Barrast's. But entertainments of all kinds bored Montrose immensely, and only the presence of Alice had aided him to endure the shallow chatter of his hostess and the artificiality of his surroundings. The after-events in Eberstein's room had both startled and awed him, so that he was still greatly moved by what had taken place when he reached his modest lodgings.