Page:Anthony Hope - The Kings Mirror.djvu/208

 of myself as standing alone, as being independent and under the power of nobody in any respect. This was to me a stronger check than the restraint of accepted morality. Looking back on the matter, and judging myself as I should judge any young man, I am confident that my passion would easily have swept away the ordinary scruples. It was my other conscience, my King's conscience, that raised the barrier and protracted the resistance. Here is another case of that reaction of my position on myself which has been such a feature of my life. Varvilliers' unreasoned philosophy did not cover this point. Here I had to fight out the question for myself. It was again a struggle between the man and the king, between a natural impulse and the strength of an intellectual conception. I perceived with mingled amusement and bitterness how entirely Varvilliers failed to appreciate the condition of my mind or to conceal his surprise at my alternate hot and cold fits, urgency followed by a drawing-back, eagerness to be moving at moments when nothing could be done, succeeded by refusals to stir when the road was clear. I believe that he came to have a very poor opinion of me as a man of the world; but his kindness toward me never varied.

But there was one to whom my mind was an open book, who read easily and plainly every thought of it, because it was written in the same characters as was his own. The politician who risked his future, the debtor who every day incurred new expenses, the devotee of principles who sacrificed them for his passion, the deviser of schemes who ruined them at the demand of his desires, here was the man who could understand the heart of his King. Wetter was my sympathizer, and Wetter was my rival. The