Twenty-four hours—­little more—­since on that same hill-side he had held Diana in his arms in the first rapture of love.  What was it that had changed?  How was it—­for he was frank with himself—­that the love which had been then the top and completion of his life, the angel of all good-fortune within and without, had become now, to some extent, a burden to be borne, an obligation to be met?

Certainly, he loved her well.  But she came to him now, bringing as her marriage portion, not easy joy and success, the full years of prosperity and ambition, but poverty, effort, a certain measure of disgrace, and the perpetual presence of a ghastly and heart-breaking memory.  He shrank from this last in a positive and sharp impatience.  Why should Juliet Sparling’s crime affect him?—­depress the vigor and cheerfulness of his life?

As to the effort before him, he felt toward it as a man of weak unpractised muscle who endeavors with straining to raise a physical weight.  He would make the effort, but it would tax his whole strength.  As he strolled along the down, dismally smoking and pondering, he made himself contemplate the then and now—­taking stock, as it were, of his life.  In this truth-compelling darkness, apart from the stimulus of his mother’s tyranny, he felt himself to be two men:  one in love with Diana, the other in love with success and political ambition, and money as the agent and servant of both.  He had never for one moment envisaged the first love—­Diana—­as the alternative to, or substitute for the second love—­success.  As he had conceived her up to twenty-four hours before, Diana was to be, indeed, one of the chief elements and ministers of success.  In winning her, he was, in fact, to make the best of both worlds.  A certain cool analytic gift that he possessed put all this plainly before him.  And now it must be a choice between Diana and all those other desirable things.

Take the poverty first.  What would it amount to?  He knew approximately what was Diana’s fortune.  He had meant—­with easy generosity—­to leave it all in her hands, to do what she would with.  Now, until his mother came to her senses, they must chiefly depend upon it.  What could he add to it?  He had been called to the Bar, but had never practised.  Directorships no doubt, he might get, like other men; though not so easily now, if it was to be known that his mother meant to make a pauper of him.  And once a man whom he had met in political life, who was no doubt ignorant of his private circumstances, had sounded him as to whether he would become the London correspondent of a great American paper.  He had laughed then, good-humoredly, at the proposal.  Perhaps the thing might still be open.  It would mean a few extra hundreds.