without aid from one end of the room to the other. This was a long
business, and always hitherto somewhere about the middle of it Ernest
Henry had sat down suddenly, pretending, even to himself, that his shoe
_hurt_, or that he was bored with the game, and would prefer some other.

There came, then, a beautiful spring evening. The long low evening sun
flooded the room, and somewhere a bell was calling Christian people to
their prayers, and somewhere else the old man with the harp, who always
came round the Square once every week, was making beautiful music.

Ernest Henry's father had taken the nurse's place for an hour, and was
reading a _Globe_ with absorbed attention by the window; Mr.
Wilberforce, senior, was one of London's most famous barristers, and the
_Globe_ on this particular afternoon had a great deal to say about this
able man's cleverness. Ernest Henry watched his father, watched the
light, heard the bell and the harp, felt that the hour was ripe for his
attempt.

He started, and, even as he did so, was aware that, after he had
succeeded in this great adventure, things--that is, life--would never be
quite the same again. He knew by now every stage of the first half of
his journey. The first instalment was defined by that picture of the
garden and the roses and the peacocks; the second by the beginning of
the square brown nursery table; and here there was always a swift and
very testing temptation to cling, with a sticky hand, to the hard and
shining corner. The third division was the end of the nursery table
where one was again tempted to give the corner a final clutch before
passing forth into the void. After this there was nothing, no rest, no
possible harbour until the end.