really a high revulsion and a sort of noble pity. He seemed indeed
to have his finger upon the pulse of history and to be in the secret
of the gods. He had them all in his hand, the tablets and the scales
and the torch. He couldn't keep a character together, but he might
easily pull one to pieces. That would be "creative work" of a kind--
he could reconstruct the character less pleasingly, could show an
unknown side of it. Mr. Locket had had a good deal to say about
responsibility; and responsibility in truth sat there with him all
the morning, while he revolved in his narrow cage and, watching the
crude spring rain on the windows, thought of the dismalness to which,
at Dover, Mrs. Ryves was going back. This influence took in fact the
form, put on the physiognomy of poor Sir Dominick Ferrand; he was at
present as perceptible in it, as coldly and strangely personal, as if
he had been a haunting ghost and had risen beside his own old
hearthstone. Our friend was accustomed to his company and indeed had
spent so many hours in it of late, following him up at the museum and
comparing his different portraits, engravings and lithographs, in
which there seemed to be conscious, pleading eyes for the betrayer,
that their queer intimacy had grown as close as an embrace. Sir
Dominick was very dumb, but he was terrible in his dependence, and
Peter would not have encouraged him by so much curiosity nor
reassured him by so much deference had it not been for the young
man's complete acceptance of the impossibility of getting out of a
tight place by exposing an individual. It didn't matter that the
individual was dead; it didn't matter that he was dishonest. Peter
felt him sufficiently alive to suffer; he perceived the rectification
of history so conscientiously desired by Mr. Locket to be somehow for
himself not an imperative task. It had come over him too definitely
that in a case where one's success was to hinge upon an act of
extradition it would minister most to an easy conscience to let the