“I shall never forget Meriton’s look. I believe I had meant to explain, to accuse myself, to shout out my agony of soul; but I saw the uselessness of it. A door had been shut between us. Neither of us spoke another word. He was very kind to me on the way home; he looked after me in a motherly way that was a good deal harder to stand than his open contempt. I saw the man was honestly trying to pity me; but it was no good--he simply couldn’t.” Mr. Carstyle rose slowly, with a certain stiffness. “Shall we turn toward home? Perhaps I’m keeping you.” They walked on a few steps in silence; then he spoke again. “That business altered my whole life. Of course I oughtn’t to have allowed it to--that was another form of cowardice. But I saw myself only with Meriton’s eyes--it is one of the worst miseries of youth that one is always trying to be somebody else. I had meant to be a Meriton--I saw I’d better go home and study law.... “It’s a childish fancy, a survival of the primitive savage, if you like; but from that hour to this I’ve hankered day and night for a chance to retrieve myself, to set myself right with the man I meant to be. I want to prove to that man that it was all an accident--an unaccountable deviation from my normal instincts; that having once been a coward doesn’t mean that a man’s cowardly... and I can’t, I can’t!” Mr. Carstyle’s tone had passed insensibly from agitation to irony. He had got back to his usual objective stand-point. “Why, I’m a perfect olive-branch,” he concluded, with his dry indulgent laugh; “the very babies stop crying at my approach--I carry a sort of millennium about with me--I’d make my fortune as an agent of the Peace Society. I shall go to the grave leaving that other man unconvinced!” Vibart walked back with him to Millbrook. On her doorstep they met Mrs. Carstyle, flushed and feathered, with a card-case and dusty boots. “I don’t ask you in,” she said plaintively, to Vibart, “because I can’t answer for the food this evening. My maid-of-all-work tells me that she’s going to a ball--which is more than I’ve done in years! And besides, it would be cruel to ask you to spend such a hot evening in our stuffy little house--the air is so much cooler at Mrs. Vance’s. Remember me to Mrs. Vance, please, and tell her how sorry I am that I can no longer include her in my round of visits. When I had my carriage I saw the people I liked, but now that I have to walk, my social opportunities are more limited. I was not obliged to do my visiting on foot when I was younger, and my doctor tells me that to persons accustomed to a carriage no exercise is more injurious than walking.” She glanced at her husband with a smile of unforgiving sweetness. “Fortunately,” she concluded, “it agrees with Mr. Carstyle.” THE TWILIGHT OF THE GOD I