inaccessible height of the past. Dignity he had in abundance, and a
certain mellow, old-fashioned quality; yet, in spite of his
well-favoured youth, he was singularly lacking in sympathetic appeal.
Already people were beginning to say that they "admired Culpeper; but he
was a bit of a prig, and they couldn't get really in touch with him."
His attitude of mind, which was passive but critical, had developed the
faculties of observation rather than the habits of action. As a member
of the community he was indifferent and amiable, gay and ironic. Only
the few who had seen his reserve break down before the rush of an
uncontrollable impulse suspected that there were rich veins of feeling
buried beneath his conventional surface, and that he cherished an
inarticulate longing for heroic and splendid deeds. The war had left
him with a nervous malady which he had never entirely overcome; and this
increased both his romantic dissatisfaction with his life and his
inability to make a sustained effort to change it.

The sky had faded swiftly to pale orange; the distant buildings appeared
to swim toward him in the silver air; and the naked trees barred the
white slopes with violet shadows. In the topmost branches of an old
sycamore the thinnest fragment of a new moon hung trembling like a
luminous thread. The twilight was intensely still, and the noises of the
city fell with a metallic sound on his ears, as if a multitude of bells
were ringing about him. While he walked on past the bald outline of the
restored and enlarged Capitol, this imaginary concert grew gradually
fainter, until he heard above it presently the sudden closing of a
window in the Governor's mansion--as the old gray house was called.

Pausing abruptly, the young man frowned as his eyes fell on the charming
Georgian front, which presided like a serene and spacious memory over
the modern utilitarian purpose that was devastating the Square. Alone in