Trafalgar Square. He turned westward, walking swiftly for the first hundred yards, rather fearing that he might be followed. Then he slowed down; swift walking made his limp too painfully obvious.
He was dissatisfied with both himself and Braithwaite. He felt as though he had gone to meet some one in a wood and had heard only the muttering of a voice and the rustle of retreating footsteps. "If I had only seen his face," he thought.
In recalling Braithwaite, he found himself picturing two persons, of both of whom he had had separate and distinct glimpses: the one the loyal man, who in years gone by had served him faithfully and shared so many of his adventures; the other the arrogant, red-tabbed superior, who had stolen his happiness without warning. It was impossible to resolve the two into one. The first he still regarded with affection. The second—— He had never allowed himself to hate any one. Hatred he held to be back of breeding—a weak man's subterfuge for acknowledging self-distrust. Because he had come so near to hating, he accused himself of censoriousness. "If I had only seen his face—the real man beneath the pretense—I might have understood and helped him," he muttered.
Tabs extended his hand. Braithwaite made no motion to take it.
And now he was going to a fresh encounter where even more sympathy would be required. It would be easy to condemn Maisie P. Lockwood. On a superficial judgment she merited nothing else. Three husbands in four and a half years, plus a risky flirtation with a married man were not the credentials of an honorable character. If he followed the ad
vice of Sir Tobias Beddow, he would seek to assess her price at once. But he had never been accustomed to regard women in that light—as a sex whose virtue could be inflated or depressed by the increase or shrinkage of a balance at the bank. Actually he knew very little about women; riding as a knight-errant, with the wonder in his eyes of the mystery that might surprise him round the luck of any corner, he had never given himself much time to learn. His ideas about women were Tennysonian. He liked to believe that they were free from temptations, more true in their emotions, more generous in their affections, more unerring and unstained than men. He extended to them all the reverent tenderness with which he regarded his mothers memory. In this he saw nothing quixotic; to him the most hoydenish girl was a potential mother, whose body possessed a sacredness quite apart from herself as a slim, adventurous ark which would bear the future of the race across the deluge of the ages. He knew, as a matter of fact, that all women were invariably neither saints nor angels; but he clung to his chivalrous superstition as a man prays, though he receives no answers to his prayers. To the recorded cynicism of experimenters in temptation he flung back the challenge of a sadder cynic, "We're all in the gutter; but some of us are looking at the stars."
So in this matter of Maisie, he argued, she couldn't be as shallow as her history would indicate. She was Terry's friend; that, in itself, was a proof of goodness. Terry had been so anxious for him to meet and comprehend her that she had gone behind
his back to prompt the appointment. Well, he would make a better job of this second interview than he had of the one that was just ended. He must approach it, at any rate, without prejudice.