"Very likely I shall; but it'll be nothing if I do. If you can't stand a
little thing like that you'd better not have come back with the ideas
that have brought you."




III


Davenant turned away into the moonlit mist. Through it the electric
lamps of Boston, curving in crescent lines by the water's edge, or
sprinkled at random over the hill which the city climbs, shone for him
with the steadiness and quiet comfort inherent in the familiar and the
sure after his long roaming. Lighting a cigarette, he strode along the
cement pavement beside the iron railing below which the river ran
swiftly and soundlessly. At this late hour of the evening he had the
embankment to himself, save for an occasional pair of lovers or a group
of sauntering students. Lights from the dignified old houses--among
which was Rodney Temple's--overlooking the embankment and the Charles
threw out a pleasant glow of friendliness. Beyond the river a giant
shadow looming through the mist reminded him of the Roman Colisseum seen
in a like aspect, the resemblance being accentuated in his imagination
by the Stadium's vast silence, by its rows upon rows of ghostly gray
sedilia looking down on a haunted, empty ring. His thoughts strayed to
Rome, to Cairo, to Calcutta, to Singapore, to the stages of those two
patient journeys round the world, made from a sense of duty, in search
of a widening of that sheerly human knowledge which life had hitherto
denied him. Having started from London and got back to London again, he
saw how imperfectly he had profited by his opportunities, how much he