No date was announced.  Paragraphs said merely that it would be “before the end of the year.”

After all, his day amid the fields was spoilt.  He had allowed his mind to stray in the forbidden direction, and the seeming quiet to which he had attained was overthrown once more.  Heavily he moved towards the wayside station, and drearily he waited for the train that was to take him back to his meaningless toil and strife.

In the compartment he entered, an empty one, some passenger had left a weekly periodical; Piers seized upon it gladly, and read to distract his thoughts.  One article interested him; it was on the subject of national characteristics:  cleverly written, what is called “smart” journalism, with grip and epigram, with hint of universal knowledge and the true air of British superiority.  Having scanned the writer’s comment on the Slavonic peoples, Piers laughed aloud; so evidently it was a report at second or third hand, utterly valueless to one who had any real acquaintance with the Slavs.  This moment of spontaneous mirth did him good, helped to restore his self-respect.  And as he pondered old ambitions stirred again in him.  Could he not make some use of the knowledge he had gained so laboriously—­some use other than that whereby he earned his living?  Not so long ago, he had harboured great designs, vague but not irrational.  And to-day, even in bidding himself be humble, his intellect was little tuned to humility.  He had never, at his point of darkest depression, really believed that life had no shining promise for him.  The least boastful of men, he was at heart one of the most aspiring.  His moods varied wonderfully.  When he alighted at the London terminus, he looked and felt like a man refreshed by some new hope.

Half by accident, he kept the paper he had been reading.  It lay on his table in Guildford Street for weeks, for months.  Years after, he came upon it one day in turning out the contents of a trunk, and remembered his ramble in the Sussex woodland, and smiled at the chances of life.

On Monday morning he had a characteristic letter from Moncharmont, part English, part French, part Russian.  Nothing, or only a passing word, about business; communications of that sort were all addressed to the office, and were as concise, as practical, as any trader could have desired.  In his friendly letter, Moncharmont chatted of a certain Polish girl with whom he had newly made acquaintance, whose beauty, according to the good Andre, was a thing to dream of, not to tell.  It meant nothing, as Piers knew.  The cosmopolitan Swiss fell in love some dozen times a year, with maidens or women of every nationality and every social station.  Be the issue what it might, he was never unhappy.  He had a gallery of photographs, and delighted to pore over it, indulging reminiscences or fostering hopes.  Once in a twelvemonth or so, he made up his mind to marry, but never went further than the intention.  It was doubtful whether he would ever commit himself irrevocably.  “It seems such a pity,” he often said, with his pensively humorous smile, “to limit the scope of one’s emotions—­borner la carriere a ses emotions!” Then he sighed, and was in the best of spirits.