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When thou with rebukes dost chasten man for sin, thou makest his beauty to consume away, like as it were a moth fretting a garment.
His own beauty, such as it was, had certainly consumed away some time ago. Others of his contemporaries had done better, he reflected, as he looked across at his old friend and rival Humphrey Finch. Humphrey, for instance, had kept his hair. He stood now in a respectful attitude under his umbrella, his enviable head with its thick white mane soberly bowed, while his eyes rested thoughtfully upon Hugh's grandson. Humphrey was a quick man and Hugh was a slow man; and although Humphrey's career had come to an untimely end after an incident in Marrakesh which even the British Foreign Service, with its wide tolerance of eccentricity, could not overlook, Hugh still felt that Humphrey had been the more successful of the two. Hugh's own career in the Civil Service after he had decided, or rather discovered, that he was not a painter, had been if not exactly meteoric at least exemplary and such as could pass as distinguished. Flattering words in high quarters had attended his retirement. Yes, he could pass as a distinguished man; just as he could pass as a good husband, and few would ever know anything to the contrary. But the terror and the glory of life had passed him by.
Hugh shifted his gaze to the neighbouring umbrella under which he made out the unusually fashionable hat and unusually subdued face of Humphrey's wife, Mildred, who, although she had not been particularly fond of Fa
Mildred, whom Hugh had kissed passionately once, he remembered, on a summer evening over twenty-five years ago, when they were both already sensible middle-aged married people. He wondered, as he watched her dab her eyes with a small handkerchief, whether she still recalled that curious incident.
The days of our age are three score years and ten.
Fa
Nothing had been right since Steve died. Randall had been reeling drunk at the funeral and said later that A
By shifting his head slightly Hugh could see behind A
Thou hast set our misdeeds before thee: and our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.
It was just as well he reflected that most of his own were, fortunately, secret. Yes, he had passed as a good husband. No one had known about Emma Sands. He had got past. Perhaps it was just this which should be, when his own time came, engraved upon his tombstone: he got away with it, he got past. His career had been successful, his marriage had been successful. No onehad known about Emma: that is no one had known much or anything for certain; and people notice so little and they forget. Fa
His mind had run this course many a time until he knew every turn and cra