in the garden before breakfast. From a window above, eyes were
watching, watching in vain. At the meal Irene was her wonted self,
but she did not enter into conversation with Otway. The young man
had grown silent again.

Heavily he went up to his room. Mechanically he seated himself at
the table. But, instead of opening books, he propped his head upon
his hands, and so sat for a long, long time.

When thoughts began to shape themselves (at first he did not think,
but lived in a mere tumult of emotions) he recalled Irene's
question: what career had he really in view? A dull, respectable
clerkship, with two or three hundred a year, and the chance of
dreary progress by seniority till it was time to retire on a decent
pension? That, he knew, was what the Civil Service meant. The far,
faint possibility of some assistant secretaryship to some statesman
in office; really nothing else. His inquiries had apprised him of
this delightful state of things, but he had not cared. Now he did
care. He was beginning to understand himself better.

In truth, he had never looked forward beyond a year or two.
Ambition, desires, he possessed in no common degree, but as a vague,
unexamined impulse. He had dreamt of love, but timidly, tremulously;
that was for the time to come. He had dreamt of distinction; that,
also, must be patiently awaited. In the meantime, labour. He enjoyed
intellectual effort; he gloried in the amassing of mental riches.

"To follow Knowledge like a sinking star
Beyond the
utmost bound of human thought--"