But he, he who had ever prided himself on his truth-fronting intellect, and had freely uttered his scorn of the credulous mob!  He who was his own criterion of moral right and wrong!  No wonder he felt like a whipped cur.  It was the ancestral vice in his blood, brought out by over-tempting circumstance.  The long line of base-born predecessors, the grovelling hinds and mechanics of his genealogy, were responsible for this.  Oh for a name wherewith honour was hereditary!

His eyes were blinded by a rush of hot tears.  Down, down—­into the depths of uttermost despondency, of self-pity and self-contempt!  Had it been practicable, he would have fled from the house, leaving its occupants to think of him as they would; even as, ten years ago, he had fled from the shame impending over him at Kingsmill.  A cowardly instinct, this; having once acted upon it gave to his whole life a taint of craven meanness.  Mere bluster, all his talk of mental dignity and uncompromising scorn of superstitions.  A weak and idle man, whose best years were already wasted!

He gazed deliberately at himself in the glass, at his red eyelids and unsightly lips.  Darkness was best; perhaps he might forget his shame for an hour or two, ere the dawn renewed it.  He threw off his garments heedlessly, extinguished the lamp, and crept into the ready hiding-place.

Part III

CHAPTER I

’Why are you obstinately silent? [wrote Earwaker, in a letter addressed to Godwin at his Peckham lodgings].  I take it for granted that you must by this time be back from your holiday.  Why haven’t you replied to my letter of a fortnight ago?  Nothing yet from The Critical.  If you are really at work as usual, come and see me to-morrow evening, any time after eight.  The posture of my affairs grows dubious; the shadow of Kenyon thickens about me.  In all seriousness I think I shall be driven from The Weekly Post before long.  My quarrels with Runcorn are too frequent, and his blackguardism keeps more than pace with the times.  Come or write, for I want to know how things go with you.

Tuissimus, J.E.E.’

Peak read this at breakfast on a Saturday morning.  It was early in September, and three weeks had elapsed since his return from the west of England.  Upon the autumn had fallen a blight of cold and rainy weather, which did not enhance the cheerfulness of daily journeying between Peckham Rye and Rotherhithe.  When it was necessary for him to set forth to the train, he muttered imprecations, for a mood of inactivity possessed him; he would gladly have stayed in his comfortable sitting-room, idling over books or only occupied with languid thought.