That other, older part, was not so easily to be silenced, nor was so readily content. Here suspicions had hardened (vain imaginary suspicions without proof, born of a narrow knowledge and of an ignorance of modern things) till they became like thorns, piercing him. He began to notice every gesture, and the shifting of every eye. He would talk to Cosmo more than Cosmo wished. Once or twice he walked alone, and to no purpose, southward out of Norwood, until he could find the fields. Once, all night, he lay awake. There was no pain, but he met the next day in a spirit of awful tension, akin to madness. Once he refused, for the first time, an invitation to Mr Barnett’s house. In such a mood he wasted his last midsummer. In such a mood death, which needs all our preparation, found him not half prepared. * * * * * To return to Mr Abbott. His name had not been mentioned for days and weeks, partly, of course, because every guide in this adventure, from Cosmo to Mr Barnett, was determined to give as little pain as might be to Mr Burden, the oldest and weakest of their number; and partly also because the giving of that pain (in itself, after all, only an imaginary evil), might result in the most practical of evils to the M’Korio. Mr Abbott was best as a friend, nay, as a director; next best as an enemy; but worst of all, as one neither enemy nor friend, but contemptuous and perhaps influencing secretly a member of their own group. They knew all this, and July had ended without a word being said. Mr Abbott himself had neither spoken nor written; Mr Burden had not approached the offices of the shipmaster. Mr Barnett and Cosmo were both confident that he dreaded the road to that familiar room; they were confident he had not met his friend. Nor had he. On the other hand, neither was the younger nor the older of these two active brains willing to temporise. It was not in their sound scheme of business to temporise, and the moment seemed to them, of all moments, the least fitting for delay. Mr Abbott pressed. The session was lagging to its end. Within a week or two the grouse would be whirring, and the chance would come for the transference of the M’Korio from the Government of the Foreign Office to that of the Colonial; the moment approached when a few men, undisturbed by the necessities or accidents of debate, could go right forward and do their best for England. But if time was propitious, time also urged them. Soon the great editors would have left their offices, the heads of the great businesses would be abroad or in the provinces. I have already alluded to the grouse; but a very few weeks and the shadow of the partridge would appear between Mr Barnett and the best laid of his plans. Already multitudes of the middle class were asleep upon beaches of sand. Anxiety, a mood that cannot long disturb such minds, had begun to cast a wing over Mr Barnett’s clear and creative intelligence.