 head.«
    And you have her heart, Lydiard could have rejoined.
    They said good-bye, neither of them aware of the other's task of endurance.
    As they were parting, Beauchamp perceived his old comrade Jack Wilmore
walking past.
    »Jack!« he called.
    Wilmore glanced round. »How do you do, Beauchamp?«
    »Where are you off to, Jack?«
    »Down to the Admiralty. I 'm rather in a hurry; I have an appointment.«
    »Can't you stop just a minute?«
    »I 'm afraid I can't. Good morning.«
    It was incredible; but this old friend, the simplest heart alive, retreated
without a touch of his hand, and with a sorely wounded air.
    »That newspaper article appears to have been generally read,« Beauchamp said
to Lydiard, who answered: -
    »The article did not put the idea of you into men's minds, but gave tongue
to it: you may take it for an instance of the sagacity of the Press.«
    »You wouldn't take that man and me to have been messmates for years! Old
Jack Wilmore! Don't go, Lydiard.«
    Lydiard declared that he was bound to go: he was engaged to read Italian for
an hour with Mrs. Wardour-Devereux.
    »Then go, by all means,« Beauchamp dismissed him.
    He felt as if he had held a review of his friends and enemies on the
door-step, and found them of one colour. If it was an accident befalling him in
a London square during a space of a quarter of an hour, what of the sentiments
of universal England? Lady Barbara's elopement with Lord Alfred last year did
not rouse much execration; hardly worse than gossip and compassion. Beauchamp
drank a great deal of bitterness from his reflections. They who provoke huge
battles, and gain but lame victories over themselves, insensibly harden to the
habit of distilling sour thoughts from their mischances and from most
occurrences. So does the world they combat win on them.
 
»For,« says Dr. Shrapnel, »the world and nature, which are opposed in relation
to our vital interests, each agrees to demand of us a perfect victory, on pain
otherwise of proving it a stage performance; and the victory over the world, as
over nature, is over self: and this victory lies in yielding perpetual service
to the world, and none to nature: for the world has to be wrought out, nature to
be subdued.«
