Chapter II

W ' T ET'S sit down a minute," said Harold.

" Sybil and he had wandered away from the unday afternoon group on the lawn, step by step, atless and desultory, sincerely unconscious of any urpose; they had looked at the goldfish in the stone basin below the cedars a hundred yards away; they had passed out through the wired gate and up the assy scoop between the promontories of the trees; ey had come right up beneath the whispering roof I beeches over the russet ground of last year's leaves, to the point where four rides met in the heart of the wood. Here was an aged seat set back among the rhododendrons that bordered the Little Lake, facing straight down the tunnel up which they had come; and upon it they sat down.

It had been a Sunday precisely like all other Sundays, so far. The males had come down in a long-drawn procession to find the females at breakfast, and a Sunday air had pervaded all things, generated no doubt chiefly by the substitution of trousers for knickerbockers, and the drowsy memory of church bells heard an hour and a half previously. There had followed an hour later another long-drawn procession, through the gardens and down the park, to the church half a mile away — a procession whose head, consisting of Mr. Banister, Mary, and Sybil, had appeared in church three minutes before service began, and whose tail, brought up by Harold himself, had finally caused a reverent turning of heads towards the end of the Venite. Mr. Banister's brother was a Dean; and Crowston therefore was accustomed to see the squire's pew tolerably full.

There had followed the usual indescribably languid return by way of the kitchen-gardens, back to the house, where Lady Bras ted rustled out to meet them, returned five minutes before in the motor in which her husband had driven her to mass at Heron's Ghyll. The meditative groups had formed and re-formed on the terrace in the golden noon sunshine till the roar of the gong had drawn them indoors to satisfy the customary Sunday hunger; and then once more nothing particular had happened except the departure of the motor with three or four of the party.

Harold had hung about with some anxiety until he heard Sybil's clear little voice announce that she would prefer to stroll about, and he had then hurried back to the smoking-room for a decent interval, whence he had viewed her alone on the terrace. He discerned his opportunity and took it; and here they were.

" He's rather a pious beggar, old Algy," said Harold, resuming his thread. " He was at church early this morning, you know."

Sybil began to arrange brown leaves at her feet with the end of her sunshade.

" Not my line, you know," he went on with a grandly tolerant air, " though I have no objections to it."

A wood-pigeon in some rustlingTtower of leaves verhead began a-cooing, and stopped abruptly as if e had suddenly thought of something else.

" I say, Sybil, when are you going away? "

" Oh — er — Tuesday," said the girl deliberately, still ngaged upon her pattern.

Harold sighed softly.

" Why can't you stop a bit longer? " he demanded.

Sybil finished her design.

" There," she said.

Harold looked at it with ill-disguised impatience.

" Why can't you stop a bit longer? " he repeated.

" Because I've got to go home," she said, with the me annoying deliberateness.

Harold began to swing a foot.

" I believe you're pleased to go," he said.

Sybil looked at him with a sort of critical interest. The circumstances made her feel very grown-up indeed; she thought she was behaving with admirable discretion.

" Of course, I'm always pleased to go home," she id.

Harold, too, was enjoying himself, though he told himself he was not. Sybil was always like this now.

A year ago they had been excellent friends; they had ridden together like two boys, talking incessantly at the tops of their voices; arriving late for meals, flushed and excited, vanishing again on mysterious affairs at the earliest opportunity. That had all been as natural as possible. Then a colour had come into their relations, as faint, and yet as decisive, as the first tint of sunset across the normal blue of the sky; and Sybil's behaviour had instantly shown a change of complexion. Harold's first shock had been in the previous Christmas holidays, when he had demanded that Sybil should accompany him to the roof of the house at midnight to see the old year out. He had been aware of a certain thrill of excitement as he had made his request (for he had asked nobody else to come with them), and he was quite startlingly disappointed when she had refused. It was from that fatal night that Harold dated his sorrows. She had been really tiresome ever since then, he told himself in despondent moods.

Yet at the same time he was aware that her companionship gave him quite a new kind of pleasure. Four years ago, when she had first come to Crowston, on the footing of a sort of third-cousin-by-marriage-who-needed-companions-of-her-own-age, he had been bored by the feminine intrusion; then there had developed friendliness, and finally this new relationship that was quite different from all else. She came about twice a year, but he had never felt quite the same sort of dismay at the prospect of her departure. And here she was now being as tiresome as ever, and there were only two days more. He racked his brain for reproaches.

" I think you might be more decent," he said, " considering there's only to-morrow left."

" What do you mean? "

She was looking at him with her grave Gainsborough high-browed eyes, and was astonished to see the annoyance suddenly become real.

" Oh! this is too much," he said, and stood up.

She became aware then that it was something else that annoyed him, and, following his eyes, saw a figure walking very fast towards them down the sun-flecked ride, swinging a stick.

There was no hope for it. Algy must come right up to them. There was no other way. She only hoped he would not be tactless enough to stop. The incessant bickerings between these two were beginning to distress her. Besides, it was rather distressing to her to see the way in which the elder always got the worst of it. Algy marched upon his doom unheeding.

" I say, I've lost Toby," he said, a dozen yards away. " You haven't seen him? "

Harold said nothing, but looked vindictive.

" He went after a rabbit," went on Algy genially, unconscious of offence.

" I wish you would go after a rabbit," said Harold bitterly.

' You needn't be offensive, anyhow," snapped Algy, flushing and moving off.

Harold uttered a short laugh.

It was characteristic of these two to speak in detached symbols. All connecting phrases had, through long interchanges, become eliminated. One brother played a counter, and the other another, and the game ended in a manner bewildering to the outsider who did not know the game and saw nothing decisive arrived at. But Sybil had seen these two in company sufficiently often to understand the rules. In this case Algy had been off his guard, Harold had attacked effectively, Algy resisted clumsily, and Harold made a swift sign of victory. That was all.

She waited until the homespun figure vanished round the turn of the tunnel, and while his footsteps among the leaves were still audible she spoke, fidgeting with her sunshade and looking down.

;' You were offensive, you know," she said.

" Well, why can't the beggar keep away? " burst out Harold. " He's always running his nose in everywhere."

Sybil was silent. She knew perfectly well that her sympathies were with this one; he was so much more easy and brisk and attractive. Algy always had been a little clumsy and apart from this world. But she was sorry for him, too.

" I don't know what's the row with him," said Harold again. " He doesn't seem to belong somehow. He was just like that at Eton, too."

;t You have left, haven't you? "

He nodded.

:< Yes; end of last half. Going up to the House next month."

They were in smooth water again now. Harold sat down once more in the warm gloom, and the two talked as before. The conversation would not have been worth reporting; it was of the kind that twenty thousand couples of boys and girls alone know how to carry on; it was not about anything in particular; it circled round small events and returned always to the same two centres, to Her or to Him. She was clever and he was clumsy, she parried and he attacked, she was mistress of the situation and he was not master. A small, panting, wiry-nosed dog ran into them of a sudden out of the bushes with the air of a rivileged poacher, lay down on an outskirt of the irl's dress, and cleaned himself; and she paid him ostentatious physical attentions, but her patting and pulling were purely mechanical, and the dog understood it, though the boy did not. They looked really charming, these two, framed in the dark green of rhododendrons; flecks of warm sunlight moved on her white dress and his brown holland; faint woodland sounds — the crowing of pheasants, the buzz of flies, the breathless patter of a reconnoitring rabbit, the liquid rush of a coot across the pond behind them — these made melody in the air about them.

Toby was satisfied after a while, though he had omitted to clean the bridge of his nose, and, sighing, displayed a pinkish stomach to the breeze, lulled by the warmth and the sounds and the protective human fellowship; and it was not until, hot in pursuit of a dream-rabbit, he began to kick violently among the dry leaves that Sybil remembered that tea would be ready on the lawn.

" Darling, wake up," she said suddenly to the terrier. " Time for tea! "

They went down together very slowly, walking about a yard apart, she trailing her sunshade with a pleasant rustling behind her, he with his hands in his jacket-pockets, eyeing this and that on either side, regretting that the afternoon was gone.

It was not that he had any definite programme; he was a much younger son, she had about twopence a year of her own and no prospects; but his dreams so far as they were formulated took the form of an income in the City and a small house in Kensington. There was no reason why that should not be reached five years hence.

" What are you going to do after tea? " he asked as they passed up towards the big cedar.

" I must go to my room," she said.

(a)

Algy had passed a lonely afternoon, and had enjoyed himself vastly until his encounter with Harold. Mary had gone in the motor, so, obviously, the best thing to be done was to go into the deep woods and think about her. He had called at the stables for Toby, since Toby would not require any conversation, and had gone straight across the park behind the house to a certain pine- topped slope above the village.

It was really a superb afternoon, and he passed a very pleasant hour among the trees, lying on the needles, smoking a couple of cigarettes, and looking out through the mellow air between the ruddy stems down to the red-roofed village and squat Norman church that drowsed in the hazy sunlight half a mile away and below. Toby was, after all, a slight distraction, since it was necessary to see that he did not stray, but when Algy had seen him completely settled down with a noise like the panting of a small and feverish steam-engine to the excavation of an almost infinitely deep rabbit-hole, he gave himself up to tranquil meditation.

This turned, of course, chiefly upon Mary. It was pleasant to have, as it were, a centre to which he could withdraw from all those other rather annoying persons who interrupted his actual intercourse with her; and he pleased himself with constructing endless settings in which he and she should some day live in uninterrupted bliss. This was a long business, and involved many side-issues. He considered the kind of house where they should live, the course of life, the hours for meals, the arrangements of the rooms — in fact, all the tiny details and none of the principles.

In the course of this he dwelt for a little on the people staying in the house, looking at them with wonder — at Lord Brasted, that stout and genial nobleman who should have been born a chauffeur, a man who had found his vocation for the first time with the invention of automobiles; his wife, that zealous convert to Popery, in itself a strange and impossible religion, who stood like a distinguished arum-lily with its head on one side, and a red-crossed prayer-book; on well-bred Jack, who said nothing and did less, and yet appeared to fulfil almost perfectly some undefined function in life, since every one was pleased with him. His own family, too, came under review, persons of activity and energy who accomplished nothing... he reviewed his meditations of the previous evening. And finally there was himself.

Now, it was perfectly true that he too did nothing particular; but he had discerned, at any rate, what was to be done. He was to marry Mary. This, again, he perceived was, strictly speaking, not anything superficially different from what his father had done, and what the other males of his acquaintance had done or would do. But it was Mary that made the difference. To marry Mary was to be, rather than to do; and Doing, after all, is only of value so far as it contributes to Being. This, then, is the point of existence, he perceived — To Be....

At this point he thought that he had made a new discovery, and sat up to congratulate himself upon it. And overhead, like a ruined roof, the dusky fans expanded into the clear liquid of the sunlit air; and beneath him drowsed the village, and about him was the breathing life of a myriad beings of every order, from the stubborn root of the pine beneath his knees to the energetic hind-quarters of Toby, half disappeared into a sandy pit a dozen yards away.... Being, he said to himself again; and what is that?...

Algy made quite a number of discoveries that afternoon, formulating to himself, under the stimulus of his sentiment, a quantity of thoughts hitherto only half -perceived. It was not strange that Religion, dogmatic and emotional, was the frame of many of them, and even more than the frame. His rediscovery of God, a couple of months before, had been a real experience; and to-day he saw, after a manner unfamiliar to him, that the Creator was not so wholly disconnected from Creation as he had been accustomed to believe. There was plainly something, he thought, holding all together, as force held matter; and since included with matter was conscious Being, included also with force must be something that was, at the lowest, conscious Being. Of course, Mary was his microcosm. It was she herself that gave such infinite value to her hands, her eyes, her hair, to her buckled shoes and the faint scent of her dress, even to her door at night as he went past it on tiptoe. Then what, the solemn metaphysician asked himself, gave value to her?...

He relaxed his clasped knees as he put this question to himself, and lay back once more, staring up with his bright, puzzled eyes, under his tilted Panama, into the clear sky, crossed now and again by black specks of sentient being called gnats,... Why then, he said, this is one result of God's existence — to give an eternal and infinite value, as well as an origin, to all that is. Such was Algy Banister's first glimpse of the Absolute....

It must have been nearly four o'clock before he moved. Toby, wearied at last of his pathetic quest after the Absolute Rabbit, and lying all abroad under a bracken fan, rose and stretched each hind leg, trembling with tenseness, to an almost incredible length in a dog so small, before trusting himself to face a further walk; but Algy hardly noticed him. The world to him had that strange aspect of unreality which it always wears after prolonged and drowsy thought in the open air, but it seemed sacramental as well, an unsubstantial presentment of something else.

He went briskly along the mossy ride, seeing on his left the blue landscape rise and fall with his steps, beyond the saplings, and on his right the deep humming woods, only half-conscious of the excursions of ai

R\ bhe refreshed Toby, who with a furtive, interested air urried in and out of the undergrowth. He felt that e had arrived at profound truths — truths, whose ases and shaggy sides he had seen before amid cloudreaths of distraction, now visible and soaring into he illimitable sky. He had seen them more than once uring his silent London walks beneath the flushing wn, when there seemed to be a space and a stillness bout him not usually obtainable. I do not think he a prig; he did not believe himself especially voured, or especially pleasing to any one: he only rded with interest what he seemed to see. At about a quarter of a mile from the Little Lake he became aware of the absence of Toby; but it was useless to spend time over him. He whistled half a ozen times; he went back a few steps; he listened the autumn hum of the woods. Then he passed on, unknowing, to his encounter....

He was extremely angry as he left the two again, and strode down towards the house. Harold was not sually so offensive in company. What made it worse as that he knew that he himself had been to blame to some extent. Yet also he knew that an interruption of that kind from Theo would not have even tempted Harold to annoyance. Here was a new train of thought, or rather an old one retrodden. He asked himself hopelessly, as his wrath subsided, why it was that he was never at his ease, and in what lay the secret of his clumsiness. There was his younger brother, fully as brusque as himself, yet somehow E 49 accepted in company as a pleasing addition. There was Theo, far heavier, he knew well enough, in perception and intuition, yet always a tolerable companion. Above all, he despaired when he thought of Jack Hamilton, of his well-bred tact, his unruffled serenity, and his well-brushed hair.

In a kind of passion of angry introspection he wheeled off once more opposite the garden gate, and turned up among the bracken at a point whence he could command both the garden entrance on one side and the carriage- drive on the other (it might be that the motor party would return for tea), and threw himself down there once more.

The Absolute seemed retired once more beyond the sky; there was no Unity anywhere. Being was all very well, but Doing unfortunately was its expression; and if Doing was a series of blunders

He soothed himself once again by a visualisation of Mary, and by a passive yielding of himself to the fragrant peace of the woods, and looked out comparatively at peace twenty minutes later, himself unseen, at Harold and Sybil, accompanied by the terrier, as they passed within fifty yards of him.

" Don't forget to-morrow morning, then," said Harold as he opened the gate; " they'll be off by ten, and then "

The clash of the gate drowned the rest, and a murmur only followed as the steps went up the gravel path towards the house. But even the half sentence deepened his loneliness.

HP, lai

He lay there an hour more, till the evening breeze stole up from the west and set the bracken a-shiver. Tea did not matter, he told himself; besides, he could have some when the motoring party returned. Meanwhile he would like to get to the bottom of his meditations. But there was no sound from the hill down which the wheels must come; and there did not seem any more material to formulate beyond the fact that God was the Absolute and gave its value to everything. It sounded trite put into words, but he was deeper than words, and knew it. He had hold upon something, he thought, of which the crowded physical life of the woods, his own long, pulsating limbs and breathing lungs, even the very images formed by him of the Unimaginable were but the fringe of a superficies. The restlessness generated by that thought, d the chilly breath across the fern, combined to make him sit up. No; he would not go back to tea; he would take another round and be back before sunset.

Then his own hand on his own knee attracted his attention — sinewy, brown, and long-fingered. That too, then, signified something — some tiny detail of thought from the Absolute Mind. He looked at his fingers wonderingly, and instantly thought of Mary's. Then the train of ideas was broken and he stood up, stretching himself, till his muscles cracked and the blood rushed to his head. Yes; he would have another walk and go back to the house presently.

It was all terribly unhealthy!

(m)

It is time to be more explicit about Mrs. Banister, and that is a difficult task. She may best be pictured by a series of negations; she was not handsome, nor tall, nor clever, nor stout; neither was she repulsive, nor short, nor stupid, nor thin. She was a kind of Least Common Multiple of the female nature. Perhaps the two positive things that can be said of her was that her front teeth slightly protruded and that she was possessed of a certain placidity, and even that was more the negation of irritability than an actual virtue in itself. People became aware of its presence, as of an invisible rock, when waves of circumstance beat against it in vain.

When tea was over on this Sunday evening she remained in her chair, while one by one the others dispersed. It is to be presumed that a succession of thoughts passed through her mind, and, if so, it may be assumed that they were of a disconnected and unemotional nature.

She became aware, after a certain period, that the garden gate leading down the grass avenue to the village clashed; and looking in that direction with her pale blue eyes she descried, a minute or so later, the white figure of Sybil, alone, moving slowly upwards towards the woods.

A train of thought was ignited — or rather it began gently to smoulder... Harold... Theo and Mary

... incomes... professions... Algy... she paused on the last point, for he always puzzled her a little, contemplated almost passively his faint air of Ugly Duckling, wondered where he was; then, as a relief, passed on again to Harold and his brisk activities... his homespun suit... his sunburning....

At six o'clock the bells began from the church half a mile away among the trees. It was very Sunday evening. The light was actually golden; the park, with its long grass-slopes seen beyond the terrace and the trooping woods above, had that appearance of extraordinary opulence of life and tranquillity that seems the peculiar possession of English estates. High above the pines against the sky, beneath which Algy had meditated this afternoon, specks wheeled and dropped, and a solemn vesper cawing began from the elms behind her.

A door shut somewhere ten minutes later, there was the sound of footsteps on gravel, and she saw moving churchwards through the gardens two maids escorted by a man. All this vaguely contented her, especially as she did not propose to go to church again herself. It was plainly her duty to wait for the motor-party. Then she wondered when the party would be back,

.d thought she would go indoors, as the shadow of the house had already reached her.

About ten minutes later, as she rustled slowly up the first flight of stairs, she heard a sound that made her pause to see whether by any chance it was the throb of the motor coming down the drive. But, instead, it was quick steps coming up the stone stairs that led up from the garden into the house, up which she herself had just come, and an instant later Sybil came through, and stopped suddenly, looking up at her.

The girl's face was strangely white, and her lips shook.

" Mrs. Banister," she said breathlessly. Then she suddenly sat down on one of the hall-chairs.

" My dear! " cried the elder lady, and rustled down again. But Sybil was up, looking at her with an odd tremulousness, putting out her hands.

"It is all right," said the girl, still in that breathless voice. " He's all right now... they're bringing him along. He's all right."

A door banged overhead, and before Mrs. Banister could speak the cheerful voice of Harold broke in from overhead. But his mother had turned, and was looking, with rather a bewildered apprehensiveness, at a small procession of three who appeared at that moment coming through the wide door at the head of the garden stairs, up which Sybil had run just now.

The footman, whom Mrs. Banister had seen just now on his way to church, came first, carrying a battered Panama hat. Algy came next; and behind him fluttered a pale housemaid in her Sunday clothes.

Algy looked rather odd, and swayed a little as he came; but he resolutely turned aside the footman, who seemed to wish to support him, and came forwards across the stone-flagged passage. He certainly looked odd, extremely white, with various stains about his nose and mouth, and very bright eyes, of which one was a little bloodshot.

" My dear boy," said his mother, perturbed as a cow might be at a waved handkerchief — perturbed, not agitated.

Algy made a little gesture; but it had in it a touch of triumph as well as of bewilderment.

" I'm all right, mother," he said rather hoarsely, and his eyes wandered to Sybil, who was standing again looking at him.

" By George! " came a genial voice from the stairs. " What's the matter with your nose, old man? "

A sound broke from the girl's mouth.

" I'm all right," said Algy again. " A blackguard — Miss Sybil will tell you."

He went on, smiling in a strange one-sided way, as if he was a little drunk, and put his hand on the banister; but there was still an air of triumph.

" I'll just go and wash this off," he said, with a desperate attempt at off-handedness, and began, still holding to the banisters, to mount the stairs.

" My dear boy! " said his mother feebly. " What have you been doing? "

" She'll tell you," he said.

But Mrs. Banister went after him; and the two below stood in dead silence, listening to a murmur of question and answer ascending.

Then Harold made a grotesque face of bewilder-

Si ment; and the next instant Sybil was down on her chair, sending out peal after peal of hopeless, hysterical laughter.

She struggled to stop....

The footman, who was still standing respectfully alert, holding the straw hat, suddenly looked down his nose, and was presently gone. Harold stared, amazed at his success. The door from the outer hall opened — no one had heard the arrival — and Mary and Theo came through and stopped, astonished. The voices of the Bras teds were heard from outside.

And still the hall rang with laughter. Sybil, with her head back and her hands clutching her sides, rocked and swayed with it; tears were streaming down her cheeks, and still she laughed; through it came words, terribly distinct, disconnected, and spasmodic....

" He looked so funny — so funny — it was in the road — the man knocked him down — rude to me — I ran away — he came after — his hat — his hat. Then you made that face — oh! he looked so funny "

This was real hysteria; and Mary was on her like a cat, shaking, scolding, frowning; then suddenly Harold laughed too, one loud roar, and stopped, portentously grave, as Theo stepped forward.

It was one of those scenes that fall without warning from the sky, utterly unexpected and irresistible. It was a combination of circumstances that must have their way; and certainly Algy had looked extremely ludicrous. And still Sybil rocked and moaned dth laughter on the chair, and Mary shook and scolded....

Harold, in a kind of desperate discretion, looked vaguely upwards, and then, for the first time, appeared to realise that Algy must have heard it all; for, as le looked, he saw him turning away from the gallery overhead, with his mother still beside him, and there ras an odd look on that queer, one-sided face.

Harold still stood a moment, conscious of a very lear stab at his heart, and understanding, as in a:ind of intuition more than from Sybil's sobbing words, rhat it was that had happened. He perceived that had behaved decently for once — so he would ive expressed it — and that he had behaved extremely badly in laughing. He understood that Sybil had been mlted, and that Algy had fought for her; and in a id of fury of contrition and indignation, and even ivy, he turned and ran upstairs, just as the Bras teds ippeared from the outer hall.

Algy's room was in a dark passage opening out of;he gallery above the hall, and Harold, running along it, almost ran into his mother. She appeared to be standing at the door, trying the handle. Then she shook it.

My dear boy," she said for about the fifth time. " Let me in.... You must bathe your face." There was no answer. Harold, breathing beside her the dusk, heard from the hall beneath one last sobbing bubble of laughter, and then Mary's voice, very stern and severe.

" Let me in," said Mrs. Banister again.

(He listened intently, ashamed and miserable; but there was no sound.)

" I shall fetch your father," she said.

A very deliberate voice, rather hoarse, came from within the room.

" Mother, please go away.... I will wash my face and come very soon."

" Will you have some arnica? "

" No thank you."

Mrs. Banister released the handle and moved off, still gravely perturbed with silence; and Harold, standing alone, heard her voice mingling itself with Mary's in admonition.

He waited a moment, still listening to the silence within, rather agitated and ashamed, and indignant too that it was Algy who had fought for Sybil and not he himself. He thought he heard the bed creak, as if some one had thrown himself upon it; then once more silence. He bent his ear to the door.

" Algy," he said. " Algy, old man."

There was no answer.

" Algy," he said again.

Then there was a movement, and a footstep. The key was turned, and Algy stood there in his shirt-sleeves, his hair tumbled into a kind of absurd plume, and a white, miserable anger in his face.

" Kindly let me alone," he said. " I want no one. I heard you laugh."

"But, Algy-

The door banged straight in his face.

Harold stood a moment, furious at the reception. Then he kicked the door.

" All right," he snarled; wheeled and went away, crushing down his shame with both hands.

(IV)

Algy hardly knew how to face his family at dinner; and yet it had to be done. He could not correlate his thoughts, or decide upon his internal attitude. A number of apparently irreconcilable elements had somehow to be combined. He had behaved well; that seemed to him one fact; he, with his hands in his pockets, had, by the merest chance, strolled out through the gate in the park-paling through which Sybil, also intent on a lonely walk, had passed two minutes before; and he had been just in time to catch a young man in gaiters with a lurcher-dog attempting, apparently, to kiss Sybil. Algy had not reflected for a single instant; he had hit the young man, without a word, as hard as possible under the ear; and the next instant had seen stars and stripes. He had retained sufficient consciousness to call to Sybil to run, and had then, with fury nerving him, attempted to defend himself. But the next few moments had passed in a whirling manner, during which two or three times he had seen a red face and struck at it, and had himself been battered and knocked from side to side. Finally, at some sound, presumably as Algy sat among the nettles, the young man had disappeared into the woods on the other side of the road, after kicking Algy's hat contemptuously into the air. Algy had followed Sybil after a minute or two; had found her very white and shaking, and had walked with her home, almost in dead silence.

Well, that was one fact: he had behaved well; and the next fact was Sybil's laughter, followed by Harold's.

He had heard the comments too — that he had " looked funny."... There were moments when he lay on his bed, when he told himself she was simply hysterical; there were other moments when he preferred not to think so, and to let his resentment have full and passionate play. Then there was Harold, and his snarl at the door. Then there was the consciousness of having been badly beaten by the young man — the hat-kicking was a sign of that; then there was a sensation that he had bragged to himself in silence, and had expected to be treated as a hero.

All this, combined with a tearing headache, a smarting lip, an aching nose, and a knowledge that he " looked funnier " than ever as the bruises darkened and puffiness emerged, made him extremely sullen and unhappy, from an instinct to keep some protection over his sensitiveness. Worst of all, there was an intense consciousness of Mary, and an expectancy towards her attitude....

y a

He looked his very worst as he came down to the -awing-room and found her there....

And she, when she saw him come in alone, saw nly his sullenness and his mauled face. She thought e should not have come down looking like that — e should have dined upstairs, as Sybil was doing. It ooked so very unpleasant. Then she made an effort nd came a step nearer to him, looking away.

" I congratulate you, Mr. Algy," she said. " I hope you aren't in much pain."

He mumbled something, overcome with sudden.elight.

" Sybil's not coming down," she said, unable to:eep her eyes off that crushed-looking mouth. " She asked me to thank you again. Have you any idea who the man was? "

A poacher from London, I expect," he said thickly. ' I sent to the keepers to tell them."

Then there was silence. Algy put his hands in his pockets and took them out again. Then Mr. Banister came in, and there was cheerful Hying and the names of heathen gods, and threaten-against the young man in gaiters, and recommendations to learn boxing before next time, and a clap or two on the shoulder; and Algy's soul retired back again into the very inmost depth of his consciousness, d lay there, like a rabbit in a burrow, nervous and ert at the tramplings overhead. Harold ignored him that evening, but finally thrust a lighted bedroom candle, with careful nonchalance, into his hand — an unusual attention. Theo said a word or two, and then talked dispassionately about poachers in general. Mrs. Banister made another remark or two about arnica, and advised him to go to bed early. Mary looked at him several times, but said no more. The other guests made polite inquiries, and expressed indignation.

It was not a pleasant evening for Algy. He thought he caught a footman breathing contempt of him as he handed him salad. He sat and listened to the talk, vaguely disappointed that it was not about him, yet fearing what he hoped. It was not at all as he had expected; it was not as it would have been if one detail had been reversed, and it had been he who had thrashed the young man, and not the young man him.

He waited a moment or two in the hall, holding his candle, until the others had dispersed. Then he went to bed.

He could not sleep; his head ached too savagely; and he was thinking too violently.

His mind went over and over what had happened. In the fragrant darkness he saw again and again the hateful red face and the whirling fist, clear against the tender green and gold of the sunset woods, and felt the shock of the blows. He saw every detail of the puttee-gaiters climbing the fence to escape, the wrecked hat lying in the dust. He saw the little scene the inner hall, and heard Sybil's sobbing exclamations of how " funny he looked," and Mary's scolding; and he saw, too, Mary's embarrassed face congratulating him.

He dropped off now and again into a feverish doze, which the phantoms of his mind materialised into horrible reality; and he flinched from the fist, and iwoke again to the heavy beating of the pulses in his lose and lips and temples. And all the while, graduly, far down in his mind, below imagination and isualised shapes, a certain consideration took form. I find it hard to describe it exactly, for Algy was )ver a good relater; but it was something of this:ind — certainly a platitude, but new enough to

He began to see that the value of his act lay in its tention; and that the disagreeable detail that he been worsted, instead of spoiling, rather enhanced e value. He saw that this was the real thing — that e had attempted to save this girl from an annoyance; and that the other things did not matter. That was simple enough; but the next perception his was deeper. It was that Mary and the rest did t entirely understand this. Of course, they recogised it; that was why they had tried to be pleasant; ut he saw that they did not give full value to the, that his act lost real grace in their eyes through ot being successful, and that the ignominy of his aving been absurdly thrashed really weighed in their minds against his attempt.

And yet, further, he began to see that the whole incident was a kind of test-case of their condition, and that, while they all gave real weight to the ignominy, they did not give equal weight.

As he turned from side to side on the cool pillow he began to draw up a kind of list.

At the very bottom, I regret to say, he put his mother. She seemed to see nothing at all except the physical bruises on his face. She had said something pleasant, of course, but it was purely conventional. What she really considered of importance was arnica.

Next came Theo. He had just recognised the gallantry of the attempt, but he obviously regretted the whole thing extremely, and had tactfully talked about poachers in general. It was absurd that a Banister should be mauled j^by^a single man on his own estate.

Next came his father. He too had congratulated him; but he had whisked off into fury against the poacher and the need of learning boxing.

Next came Harold. That boy was obviously ashamed of himself, and that was more eloquent than congratulations. Yet he had laughed; he had kicked the door; he had shown contempt.

And last and highest came Mary — for he dismissed Sybil as an hysterical child, with no judgment at all. Mary, without doubt, had given real and deliberate weight to the intention of the act. She had flinched at the sight^of his mouth; she had wished that he tic an had been successful; but there had been the clear consciousness of the other element — a more instinctive consciousness.

He perceived, then, that Mary was the nearest to understanding what he did.

As for the guests, he put them in brackets, as it were. Both Jack and Lady Brasted, he thought, were Tobably nearly up to Mary's standard.

Of course, it was improper that Algy should have n so analytical. He should have given them all equal credit for understanding; but there it was. He saw it: he was feverish and in pain, and he formulated it.

It was obvious that such circumstances should have added a fact to those he had collected during his afternoon meditations; but it was a fact, of a good deal of significance too, when it is considered what the end of Algy was. He perceived now plainly that there are two views of the world that may be taken — first, that the important thing is to preserve the conventions, to box well, to be successful, to keep up appear-ces, to retain society in its conservative mould; and the second, that there is a mysterious quest to be followed, that there is a certain far-distant object to which way must be made, regardless of obstacles; and that if conventions fall in ruins about the trampling traveller, and the most precious domestic ideals be upset, yet that he must continue to trample.

All this, of course, fitted in with what he had thought this afternoon; in a certain sense it clenched it, and remained with him.

The curtain fluttered in the night breeze at his window, and he fell asleep.

Downstairs they still talked about poachers.