Page:The Dial (Volume 68).djvu/65



HE end was tragic because nothing happened or ever could happen. Once again life had moved too fast for Digby Tissand, who was one of those people whom everybody likes because they expect nothing and get what they expect. He was in nobody's way except his own, but fortunately he was on good terms with himself and had inherited a comfortable income. He could do what he liked but he very rarely liked anything enough to wish to do it. Yet he was affectionate, though when the affection of others came his way it hurt him because he knew he did not deserve it. He suffered from an incurable modesty.

He was a Barrister: that is, he had chambers in the Temple into which he could take refuge when the idea of entering his club became insupportable, but nobody ever briefed him except his own family, because he was incapable of speaking with authority and was always convinced by his opponent's argument. It has to be added that he was capable of the most passionate admiration but could never express it, because it seemed to him to be an intrusion upon the object of it.

Pleasant to look upon, he was good at games and in spite of his French name was almost overwhelmingly English. He had many acquaintances but no friends; and he lived in a tiny box of a flat in Westminster, because that was the place to which he had drifted when he came to London, for no particular reason except that his "set" at Oxford had all gone to London. They had succeeded, married, become important; but he remained unimportant and thereby enjoyed a certain distinction. There were times, however, when he longed for some woman to take him seriously, but that never happened and by the time he was thirty he had put that hope from him, and found consolation in adoring the heroines in books. Occasionally he met women who were like those heroines, but they were nearly always married or engaged or terrifyingly intelligent, and