inspiring a lean, pale, dark-browed face--the face of an ascetic, lit by
a flame of energising life. He looked as if he would spend and be spent
by it to the last charred fragment, in pursuit of the idea. There was
nothing in his vivid aspect of Peter Margerison's gentle philosophy of
acquiescence; he looked as if he would to the end dictate terms to life
rather than accept them--an attitude combined oddly with a view which
regarded the changes and chances of circumstance as more or less
irrelevant to life's vital essence.

Peter didn't know why Rodney wanted him to be a travelling pedlar--except
that, as he had anyhow once been a Socialist, he presumably disliked the
rich (ignorant or otherwise) and included Leslie among them. Peter always
had a vague feeling that Rodney did not wholly appreciate his cousin
Urquhart, for this same reason. A man of means, Rodney would no doubt
have held, has much ado to save his soul alive; better, if possible, be
a bricklayer or a mendicant friar.

"Some day," said Peter politely, "I may have to be a travelling pedlar.
This is only an experiment, to see if it works."

He was conscious suddenly of two opposing principles that crossed swords
with a clash. Rodney and Urquhart--poverty and wealth--he could not
analyse further.

But Rodney was newly friendly to him for the rest of that term. Urquhart
commented on it.

"Stephen always takes notice of the destitute. The best qualification for
his regard is to commit such a solecism that society cuts you, or such a
crime that you get a month's hard. Short of that, it will do to have a