altogether escaping recognition from the crowds who were still hanging
about on the chance of catching a glimpse of him. He was somehow
conscious, as he turned northwards, of a peculiar sense of exhilaration,
a savour in life unexpected, not altogether analysable. As a rule, the
streets themselves supplied him with illimitable food for thought; the
passing multitudes, the ceaseless flow of the human stream,
justification absolute and most complete for the new faith of which he
was the prophet. For the cause of the people had only been recognised
during recent days as something entirely distinct from the Socialism and
Syndicalism which had been its precursors. It was Maraton himself who
had raised it to the level of a religion.

To-night, however, there was a curious background to his thoughts. Some
part of his earlier life seemed stirred up in the man. The one
selfishness permitted to rank as a virtue in his sex was alive. His
heart had ceased to throb with the loiterers, the flotsam and jetsam of
the gutters. For the moment he was cast loose from the absorbed and
serious side of his career. A curious wave of sentiment had enveloped
him, a wave of sentiment unanalysable and as yet impersonal; he walked
as a man in a dream. For the first time he had seen and recognised the
imperishable thing in a woman's face.

He reached at last one of the large, somewhat gloomy squares in the
district between St. Pancras and New Oxford street, and paused before
one of the most remote houses situated at the extreme northeast corner.
He opened the front door with a latch-key and passed across a large but
simply furnished hall into his study. He entered a little abstractedly,
and it was not until he had closed the door behind him that he realised
the presence of another person in the room. At his entrance she had
risen to her feet.