He was already tortured by the doubt whether or no he might venture to meet Antonia at the station, and, after sending his servant with the dog to the address marked on its collar, he formed the resolve to go and see his mother, with some vague notion that she might help him to decide.  She lived in Kensington, and, crossing the Brompton Road, he was soon amongst that maze of houses into the fibre of whose structure architects have wrought the motto:  “Keep what you have—­wives, money, a good address, and all the blessings of a moral state!”

Shelton pondered as he passed house after house of such intense respectability that even dogs were known to bark at them.  His blood was still too hot; it is amazing what incidents will promote the loftiest philosophy.  He had been reading in his favourite review an article eulogising the freedom and expansion which had made the upper middle class so fine a body; and with eyes wandering from side to side he nodded his head ironically.  “Expansion and freedom,” ran his thoughts:  “Freedom and expansion!”

Each house-front was cold and formal, the shell of an owner with from three to five thousand pounds a year, and each one was armoured against the opinion of its neighbours by a sort of daring regularity.  “Conscious of my rectitude; and by the strict observance of exactly what is necessary and no more, I am enabled to hold my head up in the world.  The person who lives in me has only four thousand two hundred and fifty-five pounds each year, after allowing for the income tax.”  Such seemed the legend of these houses.

Shelton passed ladies in ones and twos and threes going out shopping, or to classes of drawing, cooking, ambulance.  Hardly any men were seen, and they were mostly policemen; but a few disillusioned children were being wheeled towards the Park by fresh-cheeked nurses, accompanied by a great army of hairy or of hairless dogs.

There was something of her brother’s large liberality about Mrs. Shelton, a tiny lady with affectionate eyes, warm cheeks, and chilly feet; fond as a cat of a chair by the fire, and full of the sympathy that has no insight.  She kissed her son at once with rapture, and, as usual, began to talk of his engagement.  For the first time a tremor of doubt ran through her son; his mother’s view of it grated on him like the sight of a blue-pink dress; it was too rosy.  Her splendid optimism, damped him; it had too little traffic with the reasoning powers.

“What right,” he asked himself, “has she to be so certain?  It seems to me a kind of blasphemy.”

“The dear!” she cooed.  “And she is coming back to-morrow?  Hurrah! how I long to see her!”

“But you know, mother, we’ve agreed not to meet again until July.”

Mrs. Shelton rocked her foot, and, holding her head on one side like a little bird, looked at her son with shining eyes.

“Dear old Dick!” she said, “how happy you must be!”