"That is the case. But ask me no more now. With the aid of the Blessed One you must work out your salvation in fear and trembling."
"Indicate my enemy and I shall forgive him for Alice's sake," cried the young man with impetuous generosity.
"You must forgive him for his own."
"How can I when I don't know why we are enemies?"
"You will know when it is necessary you should know."
Montrose passed his hands across his brow and stood up slowly. "It is all bewildering and difficult."
"Very bewildering and very difficult. I answered that question earlier in the evening. We talk in a circle. To do so is a waste of time. Good-night!"
Another question was trembling on Montrose's lips, but he refrained from putting it, and with a silent hand-shake departed slowly. Accustomed to come and go at will in this house, which was more a home to him than any habitation he had known, the young man descended the stairs and let himself out into the silent square. The balmy summer night was brilliant with stars, and charged with some mysterious healing influence, which soothed and relaxed his weary nerves. On all sides the great city was yet awake and alive with people, each one intent upon the realisation of his or her desire. But here, isolated from the roaring thoroughfares, the quadrangle was comparatively lonely and dark, as the passers-by were few and the lights widely scattered. The central gardens, with their trees and shrubs and turf and flowers, slept within the rusty iron railings, speaking every now and then as a wandering breeze woke the leaves to sigh and whisper. The hurrying steps of a wayfarer, the measured heavy tread of a policeman, the murmur of distant life: Montrose heard these things without hearing as it were, as without seeing he stared at the silent cats gliding through the shadows. He walked along, wrapped up in his own thoughts, seeking mechanically his rooms and bed.