the pervading mediocrity, the apotheosis of the average.  Was this the best that democracy had to offer mankind?  Was there no depth below the shallows?  Was it impossible, even by the most patient search, to discover some justification of the formlessness of the age, of the crazy instinct for ugliness?  He could forgive it all, he might eventually bring his mind to believe in it, if there were only some logical design informing the disorder.  If he could find that it contained a single redeeming principle that was superior to the old order, he felt that he should be able to surrender his disbelief.

He was leaving the gate when a woman, walking slowly in front of the house, spoke to him abruptly.

“If I wait here shall I see the Governor come out?”

With the feeling that he was passing again through a familiar nightmare, he turned quickly and looked down on the pathetic figure he had seen the evening before.  In the daylight she seemed more pitiable and less repellent than she had appeared in the darkness.  The hollowness of her features gave a certain dignity to her expression—­the look of one who is returning from the shadows of death.  Years ago, before illness or dissipation had wrecked her health and her appearance, she may have been attractive, he surmised, in a common and obvious fashion.  Her black eyes were still striking, and the sunlight revealed a quantity of coarse black hair on which he detected the claret tinge of fading dye.

“I am sorry,” she added as she recognized him.  “I did not know it was you.”  As soon as she had spoken she became confused and tried to pass on; but he made a movement to detain her.

“Have you any particular reason for wishing to see the Governor?”

“Oh, no, I am a stranger here.”  Her accents were ordinary, yet there was a note of the unusual in her appearance and manner.  Whatever she was, she was not commonplace.

“But you were waiting to see him?” he said.

Her gaze left his face and travelled uncertainly over the mansion.  “Oh, yes, I thought I might see him.  I’ve never seen a Governor.”

“You do not wish to speak to him?”

“No; why should I wish to speak to him?  I’m a stranger, that’s all.  I like to see whatever is going on.  Was that his daughter who went out just now?”

“Yes, that was his daughter.”

“Then she is pretty—­almost as pretty as—­Thank you, sir.  I will go along now.  I’m staying not far from here, and I come out when I get the chance to watch the squirrels in the Square.”

The explanation sounded simple enough; yet he suspected, though he could not have defined his reason, that she was not telling the truth.  Again he asked himself if she could have known Gideon Vetch in the past?  It was possible; it was not even improbable.  Once, even ten or fifteen years ago, she may have been handsome in her coarse and showy style; and he had no proof, except Patty, that the Governor had ever possessed a fastidious taste.