I must wait, and try to know him better.'
The conversation had so wearied Michael, that in returning to the
house he had to lean on his companion's arm. Sidney was silent, and
yielded, he scarce knew why, to a mood of depression. When Jane
returned from Maldon in the evening, and he heard her happy voice as
the children ran out to welcome her, there was a heaviness at his
heart. Perhaps it came only of hope deferred.
CHAPTER XXI
DEATH THE RECONCILER
There is no accounting for tastes. Sidney Kirkwood, spending his
Sunday evening in a garden away there in the chaw-bacon regions of
Essex, where it was so deadly quiet that you could hear the flutter
of a bird's wing or the rustle of a leaf, not once only
congratulated himself on his good fortune; yet at that hour he might
have stood, as so often, listening to the eloquence, the wit, the
wisdom, that give proud distinction to the name of Clerkenwell
Green. Towards sundown, that modern Agora rang with the voices of
orators, swarmed with listeners, with disputants, with mockers, with
indifferent loungers. The circle closing about an agnostic lecturer
intersected with one gathered for a prayer-meeting; the roar of an
enthusiastic total-abstainer blended with the shriek of a Radical
politician.
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