He pushed on through the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she loved? Not till A' the seas gang dry, my dear, An the rocks melt wi' the sun! How he found his way home he hardly knew; for it was a moment of blind crisis with him. All that crowded, dramatic scene of the House--its lights, its faces, its combinations--had vanished from his mind. What remained was a group of three people, contemplated in a kind of terror--terror of what this thing might grow to! Once, in St. James's Street, the late hour, the soft, gusty night, suddenly reminded him of that other gusty night in February when he had walked home after his parting with Letty, so well content with himself and the future, and had spoken to Marcella Maxwell for the first time amid that little crowd in the Mall. Nothing had been irreparable then. He had his life in his hands. As for this passion, that was creeping into all his veins, poisoning and crippling all his vitalities, he was still independent enough of it to be able to handle it with the irony it deserved. For it was almost as ludicrous as it was pitiable. He did not want any man of the world, any Harding Watton, to tell him that. What amazed him was the revelation of his own nature that was coming out of it. He had always been rather proud to think of himself as an easygoing fellow with no particular depths. Other men were proud of a "storm period"--of feasting and drinking deep--made a pose of it. Tressady's pose had been the very opposite. Out of a kind of good taste, he had wished to take life lightly, with no great emotion. And marriage with Letty had seemed to satisfy this particular canon. Now, for the first time, certain veils were drawn aside, and he knew what this hunger for love, and love's response, can do with a man--could do with _him_, were it allowed its scope! Had Marcella Maxwell been another woman, less innocent, less secure!