And that was going on steadily, a
perpetual leakage of time. To-night he would go to meet her again, and
begin to accumulate to himself ignominy in the second part of the
course, the botanical section, also. And so, reluctantly rejecting one
cloudy excuse after another, he clearly focussed the antagonism
between his relations to Ethel and his immediate ambitions.
Things had come so easily to him for the last two years that he had
taken his steady upward progress in life as assured. It had never
occurred to him, when he went to intercept Ethel after that _seance_,
that he went into any peril of that sort. Now he had had a sharp
reminder. He began to shape a picture of the frog-like boy at home--he
was a private student of the upper middle class--sitting in a
convenient study with a writing-table, book-shelves, and a shaded
lamp--Lewisham worked at his chest of drawers, with his greatcoat on,
and his feet in the lowest drawer wrapped in all his available
linen--and in the midst of incredible conveniences the frog-like boy
was working, working, working. Meanwhile Lewisham toiled through the
foggy streets, Chelsea-ward, or, after he had left her, tramped
homeward--full of foolish imaginings.
He began to think with bloodless lucidity of his entire relationship
to Ethel.
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