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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Stronger Influence, by F.E. Mills Young
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Stronger Influence
+
+Author: F.E. Mills Young
+
+Release Date: November 30, 2011 [EBook #38176]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE STRONGER INFLUENCE ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England
+
+
+
+
+The Stronger Influence
+By F.E. Mills Young
+Published by George H. Doran Company, New York.
+This edition dated 1922.
+
+The Stronger Influence, by F.E. Mills Young.
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+
+________________________________________________________________________
+THE STRONGER INFLUENCE, BY F.E. MILLS YOUNG.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER ONE.
+
+Among the passengers which the train disgorged on to the little platform
+at Coerney, the station from which visitors to the Zuurberg proceeded on
+their journey up the steep mountain road by cart, were an elderly woman
+and her husband; a middle-aged man, who was acquainted but not otherwise
+connected with them; and a young girl, who was neither connected nor
+acquainted with any of her fellow-travellers, and who, after the first
+cursory glance towards them, evinced no further curiosity in their
+movements, but walked alone across the sunlit space to where in the
+shade of the trees the cart waited until such time as it should please
+the driver to bring up his horses and inspan them in preparation for the
+long drive up the mountain.
+
+The girl's three fellow-travellers had gone in quest of refreshment; the
+driver was invisible; an atmosphere of languorous repose brooded over
+the place, which, with the departure of the train, seemed utterly
+deserted, given over to the silences and the hot golden light of the
+afternoon sun.
+
+The girl approached the cart with no thought of taking her seat therein:
+she preferred to walk and stretch her cramped limbs; and it was obvious
+that the cart would not start for some while.  But the cart stood in the
+shade, and the day was hot: the girl sought the shadows instinctively
+and nibbled chocolate while she scrolled about under the trees, and
+awaited developments.
+
+She had been ill, and was taking a holiday to hasten the period of
+convalescence so that she would be ready to resume her duties as a
+teacher of music when the vacation ended.  The air of the Zuurberg was
+more bracing than that of the Bay.  She was looking forward to the
+change with pleasurable anticipation; looking for adventures, as girls
+in the early twenties do look for the development of unusual and
+exciting events.  Teaching was dull work; routine is always dull; the
+holiday adventure offers promise of immense distraction when one sets
+forth in the holiday mood.
+
+Esme Lester's mood, which at starting had been high with expectation,
+was a little damped.  The journey in the train had tired her more than
+she had realised; and the appearance of her fellow-travellers--people
+whom she would meet daily, be under the same roof with--was not
+calculated to excite her curiosity.  She wanted companionship.  She
+wanted youth about her--not the immature youth with which her work
+brought her into daily contact, but contemporaries whose thoughts and
+tastes would assimilate with her own.  The nice elderly couple who had
+repaired to the small hotel for refreshment, and the rather heavy
+middle-aged man who had followed them with the same purpose in view, did
+not answer her requirement in any sense.  If this was all the
+companionship her holiday promised she would find it dull.
+
+At the end of half an hour, during which time Esme had tired of
+wandering and had seated herself on the pole of the cart, she saw her
+fellow-travellers emerge from the hotel and come towards her, and in the
+distance the driver appeared leading two of his horses, followed by a
+native with the second pair.
+
+Esme stood up and showed a renewed interest in the proceedings.  The
+passengers looked on while the natives inspanned the lean reluctant
+team, the leader of which, despite a sorry appearance, showed signs of
+temper, which caused the elderly woman passenger considerable alarm.
+She took her seat in the back between her husband and Esme; and when,
+after the start, the leader kicked over the traces, the business of
+persuading her to remain in her seat occupied all the husband's
+attention.  Esme considered his patience wonderful.  The driver handed
+the reins to the middle-aged man and got down; and after much shouting
+and jerking and unbuckling and rebuckling matters were righted and the
+journey resumed.  But the old lady was nervous and apprehensive that the
+team would bolt.  The mountain road was sufficiently steep to have
+conveyed to any reasonable intelligence the improbability of this
+mischance; but fear lends wings to reason, and the old lady refused to
+be comforted.
+
+Panting and sweating the horses laboured up the steep incline at a pace
+that was steady enough to reassure any one; but the further they
+proceeded along the winding track the deeper yawned the precipice at the
+side of the road: it fell away sheer in places till it lost itself in
+the black-green depths of the gorge.  The old lady was so positive that
+the horses would plunge over the precipice and hurl every one to certain
+death that she closed her eyes in preparation, and clung to her
+husband's arm in the determination not to be separated from him when the
+fatal moment arrived.
+
+The old gentleman smiled whimsically at Esme over his wife's drooping
+head.  The girl, feeling that an understanding was established, returned
+the smile, and then gave her attention to the scenery, which was new to
+her and which, in its wild beauty, with the tangle of trees below and
+the green luxuriance of the mountain road revealing ever fresh and
+greater beauties the higher they climbed it, held her in silent wonder
+at the surprising incongruities of this great country which is Africa; a
+country of amazing contrasts, in parts a tangle of luxuriant vegetation,
+in other parts sterile and savage in the stark nakedness of the land.
+She had seen something of its sterility, not much; and, save for a brief
+view of the Cape Peninsular, she had not seen a great deal of its beauty
+either.  The wild green splendour of this mountain journey she found
+restful and pleasantly stimulating.  The air was cooler than in the
+plains.  A soft wind blew furtively down from the heights and met them
+as they toiled upward in the hot sunshine behind the panting team.  The
+horses' sides were dark and damp with sweat; foam flecked their chests
+and the greasy leather of the loosened reins.  But they kept doggedly
+on.  They were used to the journey, and the end of the journey promised
+rest.  The beat of their hoofs upon the road, the rumbling of the cart,
+were the only sounds to disturb the stillness.  No bird winged its
+flight across the quivering blue; there was no song of bird from the
+bush, no sign of any life, save for a number of grey monkeys which
+infested the trees lower down: these were left behind as the cart
+travelled upward.  But down in the black-green depths of the
+undergrowth, moving noiselessly and unseen, countless insects and
+reptiles pursued their busy way; and the boomslaang wound its heavy
+brown coils around the limbs of trees.
+
+Esme leaned back against the hot cushions of the cart and looked about
+her with quiet enjoyment.  Despite fatigue and the weariness behind her
+eyes caused by the hard brightness of the day, she experienced a feeling
+of exhilaration.  Every sense was on the alert to note and appreciate
+each fresh beauty along the rugged road.  The scenery became tamer as
+the ascent was neared.  Coarse grass and stunted bush took the place of
+the massed foliage of the trees.  The land at the summit was flat and
+shadeless.  But the air was light and wonderfully invigorating; and
+patches of green showed in places where the land dipped abruptly and
+lost itself in a kloof, amid a tangle of vegetation in the stony bed of
+a mountain stream.
+
+The horses took a fresh spurt when the level road was reached and
+trotted briskly towards the hotel and drew up in style before the
+entrance.  Esme surveyed the low rambling building with interested eyes.
+It was a quaint old-fashioned place, this hotel on the veld,
+one-storied, with a stoep in front and a flight of low steps leading up
+to it.  The garden gate stood open, and a man, who was possibly the
+proprietor Esme decided, waited at the gate to receive the arrivals.  A
+coloured boy came out to help with the luggage.
+
+Esme alighted and walked up the garden path, conscious of the curious
+gaze of a little knot of people gathered on the stoep to participate in
+the great excitement of the day,--the arrival of the cart with its load
+of passengers.  The hotel was fairly full; there were men and women on
+the stoep and several children.  The girl was too shy to note any of
+these people particularly; she took them in collectively at a glance and
+passed on and went inside.  A woman stepped forward out of the gloom of
+the narrow passage, took her name and conducted her to her room.
+
+Left alone in her room, Esme crossed to the open window and stood
+looking out upon the wild bit of garden with its kei-apple hedge and the
+small vley quite close to the window.  The glint of the water in the
+sunshine was pleasing to watch.  That the water would breed mosquitoes,
+and other things likely to disturb one's repose at night, did not
+trouble her; she liked to see it.  It stretched cool and clear as a
+mirror reflecting the blue of the unclouded sky.
+
+The scene from the window was peaceful and pleasing.  The whole place
+was peaceful: an atmosphere of drowsy detachment hung over everything.
+One felt out of the world here, and at the same time intensely alive.  A
+sense of well-being and of contentment came to the girl while she knelt
+before the window with her arms on the low sill, looking out upon the
+unfamiliar scene.  She had come to this isolated spot in search of
+health; and already she felt invigorated by the fresh pure air; her mind
+worked more clearly, threw off its morbid lethargy in newly kindled
+interest in everything about her.  The clean homelike simplicity of her
+little bedroom pleased her; the view from the window pleased her; it was
+expansive, uncultivated--a vast stretch of veld, green and brown in the
+glow of the declining day, with the azure sky overhead remotely blue as
+a sapphire is blue, a jewel lit with the yellow flame of the sun.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER TWO.
+
+The dining-room at the hotel was a low, narrow room, rather dark.  Its
+French windows opened on to the stoep, which was creeper veiled and
+shaded with the shrubs in the garden.  Down the centre of the room was a
+long table.  A smaller room led off from the principal dining-room,
+where the guests with families took their meals.
+
+Esme, entering later than the rest, found a seat at the principal table
+reserved for her.  On her right was seated the old gentleman who had
+been her fellow-traveller.  He looked up when she took her seat and
+spoke to her.  She turned from answering him and took quiet observation
+while she leisurely unfolded her napkin of the man who was seated on her
+left.
+
+He was a man of about twenty-eight, tall and broadly built, with however
+an air of delicacy about him altogether inconsistent with his physique.
+He was round-shouldered, and his hands, long and remarkably white,
+suggested that their owner had never performed any hard work in his
+life.  His face was altogether striking, strong and fine, with clear cut
+features, and keen dominating grey eyes.  When Esme sat down he was
+bending forward over his plate and did not once glance in her direction.
+He seemed wholly unaware of her entrance, unaware of, or indifferent to
+the presence of any one in the room.  He confined his attention to his
+food, and did not talk, or evince any interest in the talk about him.
+
+Esme, while she looked at him, was keenly alive to the fact that he was
+conscious of her presence and of her scrutiny, though he chose to ignore
+both.  A faint colour showed in his face and mounted to the crisp light
+brown hair, which, cut very short, had a tight kink in it as though it
+might curl were it allowed to grow.  She liked the look of this man,
+and, oddly, she was attracted rather than repelled by his taciturn and
+unsociable manner.  Why should a man staying at a sanatorium not remain
+aloof if he wished?  The fact of being under the same roof with other
+people should not of itself enforce an obligation to be sociable when
+one inclines towards an opposite mood.  Doubtless, like herself, he had
+come to the Zuurberg in quest of health.  He looked as if he had been
+ill.  His hand, she observed when he lifted his glass, was unsteady.
+
+She watched his hands, fascinated and puzzled.  It was obvious that he
+could not control their shaking, that he was aware of this shakiness and
+was embarrassed by it.  She felt intensely sorry for him.  She also felt
+surprise at his self-consciousness.  She noticed that he ate very
+little.  He rose before the sweets, and went out by the window and
+seated himself on the stoep.
+
+Conversation brightened with his exit.  The people near her seemed in
+Esme's imagination to relax: the talk flowed more freely.  Even the old
+gentleman on her right appeared to share in the general relief: he
+turned more directly towards her and entered into conversation.  While
+the man outside sat alone, smoking his pipe, and looking into the
+shadows as the dusk drew closer to the earth.
+
+With the finish of dinner Esme walked out on to the stoep with the
+purpose of going for a stroll before bedtime.  The long straight road
+beyond the gate looked inviting in the evening gloom.  She would have
+welcomed a companion on her walk; but, save for her fellow-travellers,
+she knew no one; and her fellow-travellers showed no desire for further
+exercise.
+
+When she appeared on the stoep she was aware that the man who interested
+her so tremendously looked up as she passed close to him.  He followed
+her with his eyes as she went down the steps, down the short path to the
+gate, through the gate, out on to the open road.  But he did not move.
+Esme was conscious of his gaze though she could not see it; she was
+conscious of his interest.  The certainty that she had caught his
+attention even as he had arrested hers pleased her.  A restrained
+excitement gripped her.  She laughed softly to herself as she stepped
+into the shadowed road.  It was good to know that she left some one
+behind in whom she had provoked a faint curiosity in this place where
+she was a stranger and alone.  He, too, was alone.  She had thought when
+she passed him that he looked lonelier than any one she had ever seen or
+imagined, seated amid a crowd of people, saying nothing, doing nothing;
+sitting still and solitary, smoking and looking into the shadows.
+
+What was wrong with this man, she wondered, that he should remain so
+aloof from his fellows.  He was not a newcomer, as she was; he had
+indeed, though she did not know this, been many months at the hotel; yet
+he seldom spoke to any one.  The coming and going of visitors was viewed
+by him with indifference.  They were nothing to him, these people; he
+was less than nothing to them.  Occasionally some man came to the hotel
+with whom he entered into conversation; but more often people came and
+went and held no intercourse with him at all.  They summed him up very
+quickly for the most part; looked askance at him, and left him severely
+alone.  He did not care.  It pleased him to remain undisturbed, and the
+general disapproval troubled him very little.  But that night a girl's
+clear eyes, a girl's sweet serious face, got between him and his
+egotism, got between his vision and the shadowy dusk, and mutely asked a
+question of him: "What was he making of life?"
+
+What was he making of it?  What was he giving in return for the gifts
+which he received?  What was he doing, what had he ever done, to justify
+his existence?  Nothing.
+
+The light wind carried the answer on the dusky wings of night.  It beat
+into his consciousness and stirred him out of his easy acquiescence in
+things.  He was flotsam on the sea of life--waste matter drifting
+aimlessly, to be finally ejected and flung, spent and useless, on the
+shore.  Dust which returns to the dust, for which God in His inscrutable
+reason finds some use which eludes man's understanding.
+
+Esme Lester walked along the quiet road and thought of the man she had
+left seated alone on the stoep, the man whom she believed to be ill.
+And the man sat on and waited for her return and wondered about her with
+an interest which equalled her interest in him.  She was just a girl, a
+bright, sweet, wholesome young thing, who had happened along as the
+other guests at the sanatorium had happened along, and who would vanish
+again as they vanished, leaving him seated there still to watch further
+arrivals and departures as he had done for many weeks, as he would
+probably do for many months.  He had never seen any one until this girl
+came who had held his attention even momentarily.  She stood out from
+these others, some one apart and distinctive.  It was not merely that
+she was pretty; many pretty women came there, but they did not interest
+him.  There was something vivid and arresting about her, some elusive
+quality which caught his fancy, and which he could not define.  He
+thought she looked sympathetic.
+
+When Esme returned an hour later he was still seated on the stoep.  She
+saw his figure against the lighted doorway at his back: to all
+appearance he had not moved his position since she had passed him on
+setting forth.  But the last of the daylight had departed, and the night
+was dark; there was no moon and the starlight was obscured by a mist of
+thin clouds which trailed across the sky.  She could not see his face
+clearly.  But as she stepped up to the stoep the light from the passage
+illumined her features and revealed her fully to the man's gaze.  He
+watched her covertly from under his brows, saw the startled look in her
+eyes as they caught the artificial light, their curious bewildered blink
+as the warm glow fell on her face.
+
+Her look of blank surprise amused him.  It was like the look of a child
+which steps abruptly into the light out of darkness and finds perplexity
+in the sudden change.
+
+She passed him and went inside; and it seemed to him that the light
+glowed more dimly, that the night grew darker when she disappeared.  He
+rose and went into the bar and remained there, as was his nightly
+custom, until the bar closed, when he went to bed.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER THREE.
+
+The daylight woke Esme early.  The sunbeams found their way through the
+open window and flashed upon her face and startled her from sleep.  She
+had not drawn her blind overnight; and she lay still for a while and
+looked at the golden riot without, resting comfortably, with a feeling
+of lazy contentment and intense ease of mind and body.  The sweet
+freshness of the air poured over her in health-giving breaths.  The
+beauty of the day, the brilliance of the sunshine called her to go out
+into it and enjoy the morning in its early freshness.
+
+She rose and dressed and opening her window wider, put her foot over the
+sill and dropped down on to the grass.
+
+The heavy dew silvered the ground and sparkled like diamonds in the
+sunlight.  She felt exhilarated, surprisingly happy and glad to be
+alive.  No one seemed to be abroad at that hour except herself.  The
+hotel presented the appearance of a house in which the inmates are all
+asleep.  She went through the garden, past the low hedge, and out into
+the road.  The road, too, looked deserted.  She had the world to
+herself.  A sense of freedom gripped her.  She was not conscious of
+feeling lonely; the sunshine was companionable, and the novelty of
+everything held her attention and kept her interest on the alert.
+
+The daylight disclosed all which the night had hidden from her when she
+travelled the same road on the previous evening.  It had appeared then a
+land of shadows, of velvety dark under a purple sky; the shadows had
+rolled back, and the scene revealed wide stretches of veld, with here
+and there a clump of trees or low bushes to break the sameness of the
+view.  The veld glowed with an intensity of colour that strove with a
+sort of hard defiance against the golden light of the sun.  The sense of
+space, of solitude, was bewildering in this vast picture of sun-drenched
+open country, where no sound disturbed the silence save the muffled
+tread of her own footsteps in the powdery dust of the road.
+
+She broke into a little song as she walked briskly forward, but checked
+the song almost instantly because the sound of her own voice struck
+intrusively on the surrounding quiet: the note of a bird would have
+sounded intrusive even here, where the silence of forgetfulness seemed
+to have fallen upon the land.
+
+A tiny breath of wind came sighing across the veld; the girl lifted her
+face to meet it, and her eyes smiled.  This was the cradle of the wind;
+here it had its source upon the mountain.  She loved the wind as she
+loved the sunlight; she loved the warmth and the crudely brilliant
+colour, the untempered heat of this land of eternal sunshine, of vast
+spaces, and fierce and splendid life.  She loved, too, the dark-skinned
+people of the country; loved them for their happy dispositions and the
+childlike simplicity of their natures.
+
+Further along the road a Kaffir woman passed her with a tiny black baby
+slung in a shawl, native fashion, on her back.  Esme stopped to admire
+the baby, and touched its soft dark skin with her finger.  The native
+woman and the English girl spoke in tongues incomprehensible to one
+another; but the language of baby worship is universal; and the Kaffir
+mother smiled appreciatively, pleased at the notice taken of her babe.
+She went on her way with the light of the sun in her eyes, which met its
+fierceness as the eyes of the animals meet the sun, unblinking and
+without inconvenience.  Esme looked after her and admired her free
+graceful walk, the upright poise of her head.  The people who live in
+the sun show a superb indifference to its power.
+
+With the disappearance of the native woman a sudden feeling of
+loneliness came over her, stayed with her, despite the brightness of the
+day and the sense of returning health which came to her in the wonderful
+lightness and purity of the air.  She walked a little further, to where
+a curve in the road brought her to a belt of trees which threw a
+pleasing shade across the path.  She halted in the shade and looked
+about her with inquiring gaze.
+
+It was very beautiful here, and restful, and the air was fragrant with
+the pungent scent of the mimosa blossoms.  She gathered a branch of the
+flowers and thrust some of them in her belt.  Looking upward at the road
+she had travelled she saw that the descent was greater than she had
+imagined; the return would necessitate a steady climb.
+
+She rested for a while, leaning against one of the trees, idly watching
+the play of sunlight through the branches.  The shadows of the trees lay
+along the road in grotesque shapes.  The brooding stillness of the day,
+the brightness and the warmth, were soothing: but the feeling of
+loneliness deepened; there was something a little awe-inspiring in the
+general hush.  And then, with an abruptness that startled her, a sound
+struck upon her ears, a sound that was not loud but which was curiously
+audible in the silence.  It was the sound of footsteps crunching upon
+the road.  The figure of a man appeared round the bend and came on
+quickly, his footstep beating in measured muffled rhythm in the dust.
+He was quite close to her before he saw her; when he caught sight of her
+he hesitated for a second; it looked as though he contemplated beating a
+retreat.  Then, coming apparently to a decision, he walked on.  When he
+was abreast of her he raised his hat.
+
+Esme regarded him curiously.  It was the man whose seat was next hers at
+table, the man whose personality had arrested her attention, in whom she
+felt unaccountably interested.  He carried a stick, which he used
+occasionally to walk with and more frequently to strike with at the
+grass which bordered the roadside.  He carried it as a man carries
+something from which he derives a sense of companionship.  It was all
+the companionship he ever had upon his walks.
+
+"Good-morning," the girl said in response to his mute salutation; and
+added, after a barely perceptible pause: "It is glorious, the air up
+here."
+
+"Yes," he said, and halted irresolutely.
+
+She believed that he resented, not only her speaking to him, but her
+presence there.  He resented neither; but he felt averse from beginning
+an acquaintance which, once started, it would be impossible to draw back
+from, and which he foresaw might develop into something of very deep
+significance.  Instinctively he feared this acquaintance.  But courtesy
+demanded some response from him; he made it reluctantly and in a manner
+which did not encourage her to persevere.
+
+"You are an early riser," he said.  "Usually at this hour I have the day
+to myself."
+
+Again it seemed to her that he looked on her presence as an intrusion,
+that he preferred to take his rambles without the thought of
+encountering any one.  An emotion that was a mixture of impatience and
+anger seized her at his selfishness.
+
+"There is room for both of us," she said with a touch of scorn in her
+voice.  "And we travel in opposite directions."
+
+The man's features relaxed in a smile, the first she had seen cross his
+face, an involuntary, whimsical smile.  A gleam of understanding lit his
+eye.
+
+"Yes," he allowed briefly, and lifted his hat again, and walked on,
+leaving the girl with the feeling of having suffered a snub.
+
+She looked after him, as he went on, still hitting aimlessly at the
+grass with his thick stick as he walked, until he rounded the bend and
+disappeared from her view.  Then, dispirited and out of humour with the
+day, she left the shade of the trees and took her way upward and
+returned to the hotel.
+
+At breakfast she saw the man again.  He came in late, and dropped into
+his seat beside her with an air of weariness, as though he had walked
+far and was tired.  She did not look at him; but she felt his gaze on
+her when he came behind her chair and drew his own chair back from the
+table.  When he sat down he glanced at her deliberately.  She went on
+with her breakfast and ignored his presence.  Later, this struck her as
+unkind and somewhat childish.  But it was not possible to make amends;
+the opportunity was past.
+
+He sat, as he always sat at table, with his head bent over his plate in
+complete disregard of every one.  But the presence of the girl beside
+him, her partly averted face, the nearness of a projecting elbow with
+its white, prettily rounded arm, forced themselves on his notice, made
+him intensely self-conscious.  He put out a hand for the glass of milk
+and soda which stood beside his plate and lifted it unsteadily.  The
+sight of his own shaking hand unnerved him, made him horribly and
+painfully alive to this ugly physical defect.  Impatiently he jerked his
+arm upward; the glass tilted and the contents foamed over, ran down the
+cloth and on to the girl's skirt.  He fumbled awkwardly, almost dropped
+the glass in his agitation, righted it clumsily and turned, napkin in
+hand, his face crimson, and began to sop up the liquid.
+
+"I'm awfully sorry," he mumbled.  "I can't think how I came to do that.
+I'm sorry."
+
+Esme turned quietly and watched him while with increasing embarrassment
+he timidly wiped her dress.  In pity for him she put out a hand and took
+the napkin from him.
+
+"Don't trouble," she said.  "It's nothing really."
+
+"I've spoilt your dress," he said.
+
+"Oh! no.  It's a frock on friendly terms with the wash-tub.  That will
+be all right."
+
+"It's kind of you to make light of it," he said.  "But I'm ashamed of my
+clumsiness."
+
+She felt intensely sorry for him as he turned again to his breakfast and
+resumed eating with a sort of uncomfortable shyness that was painful to
+witness.  His hands, she noticed, shook more than usual.  He did not
+attempt to lift his glass again, though it had been placed refilled
+before him; he was physically incapable of making the effort.  Out of
+consideration for him she did not address him again, but finished her
+breakfast quickly and got up silently and left the room.
+
+She went down the passage and into her own room and changed into a clean
+frock.  It was her smartest dress which had been soiled.  She took it
+off with a sorry little smile at the pang which it cost her vanity to
+have to lay it aside.  But her earlier resentment against the man whose
+clumsiness had caused the mishap gave place to a deep compassion when
+she recalled the confused crimson of his face and the fierce yet
+diffident embarrassment in his eyes.  She was sorry for him without
+understanding why she should feel pity for a man who made no appeal to
+her sympathy.  His solitary condition was the result of his deliberate
+choice.  When a man shuns the society of his fellows the fault lies
+within himself.
+
+But the look in his eyes continued to distress her.  She resolved that
+when next she encountered him she would make him talk to her.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER FOUR.
+
+During the morning Esme played tennis with two girls and a man who were
+staying at the hotel.  The tennis court was rough, and a rope stretched
+across it did service for a net.  But the tennis players had brought
+balls and racquets with them, and, these being good, the defects of the
+ground were regarded good-naturedly as part of the fun.
+
+The girls were about Esme's own age; the man, a little older, paid
+marked attention to Miss Lester.  She introduced an element of new life
+into the place, and the attractions of the Zuurberg were beginning to
+pall.  There was nothing for a man to do, he explained as they strolled
+back together towards lunch time.
+
+"But it is pleasant," the girl said, "to do nothing when one is having a
+holiday.  It is very beautiful here."
+
+He offered to show her some good walks in the neighbourhood, and put
+himself very much at her disposal for the remainder of his stay.  It
+transpired that he was leaving at the end of the week.
+
+"There are some beautiful spots to be enjoyed at the expense of a little
+climbing," he said.  "I'll show you if you care about it.  There's a
+kloof within walkable distance that well repays the effort.  They found
+the spoor of a couple of tigers there about a month ago.  It's the sort
+of place one can imagine wild beasts prowling about in--a tangle of
+undergrowth, with the moss hanging in long green ribbons from the dead
+branches of trees.  The ferns growing in the water are a sight."
+
+"It sounds exciting," Esme said.  "But I'm not keenly anxious to meet
+wild beasts."
+
+"No great likelihood of that," he returned.  "They are no, more keen
+than you are for an encounter.  I wish you would let me take you there
+to-morrow.  We could start after lunch.  It's the coolest spot in which
+to spend a hot afternoon.  But you mustn't play tennis beforehand: it's
+quite a good stretch.  Will you come?"
+
+Looking up to answer in the affirmative, she became aware as they
+approached the stoep of the presence in his customary seat near the
+entrance of the man who excited her curiosity and her sympathy in equal
+degrees.
+
+"Who is that?" she asked her companion.
+
+He glanced towards the object of her inquiry; and instantly on
+perceiving the expression in his eyes she regretted having asked the
+question.
+
+"That!  Oh! that's Hallam--an awful rotter.  Drinks like a fish.  I've
+not seen him drunk, but I believe he never goes to bed sober."
+
+"I wish you hadn't told me that," she said in a voice that was blank
+with disappointment.
+
+He stared at her in surprise and changed colour slightly as a man might
+do who is conscious of being rebuked.
+
+"Perhaps I should have left you to discover it for yourself," he
+replied.  "But it's common knowledge.  He doesn't trouble to conceal the
+weakness.  The odd part of it is I have never seen him drink anything
+stronger than milk and soda.  But the thing is obvious enough.  He
+soaks.  I don't suppose there are two people in the hotel with whom he
+troubles to exchange a remark."
+
+This speech let in a big ray of light upon her understanding.  It became
+abruptly as clear as the daylight why this man shrunk from intercourse
+with every one, why he had seemed to shun her society, to almost resent
+her attempts to converse.  She wondered whether her new acquaintance,
+whose name was Sinclair, had noticed the incident at the breakfast-table
+and deliberately offered this information with the purpose of putting
+her on her guard.  If this were the case she determined to show him that
+she did not need advice.
+
+She walked on in silence, and stepped on to the stoep alone, and paused
+beside the chair of the man whom they had been discussing and smiled
+down at him.  He gazed back at her, surprise and uncertainty struggling
+in his look.
+
+"I'm so hot," she said.  "We've been playing tennis.  You look cool
+sitting there."
+
+He rose awkwardly to his feet, and stood with his hand resting on the
+back of the chair, and regarded her steadily.
+
+"It is cool here," he said.  "Take my seat.  You have done more to earn
+the right to it than I have."
+
+"Thank you, no.  It's a shame to disturb you.  I'm going inside to
+change."
+
+"That's the second change this morning," he said, his eyes on her face.
+
+She laughed brightly.
+
+"It's something to do," she replied.
+
+"Yes," he said.
+
+The old reserve settled upon him once more.  She noticed that he looked
+hesitatingly from her to the wicker chair beside which he stood, looked
+from it almost furtively towards the entrance.  She believed that he
+purposed retreat, and forestalled him by turning away with a little
+friendly smile and going within herself.
+
+He did not look after her.  There were people present on the stoep: he
+knew very certainly, without glancing in their direction, the interest
+they were taking in the little scene.  That they had observed the girl's
+action in stopping to speak to him, that, with her departure, they
+continued their observation of himself, he knew instinctively.  Their
+curiosity was a matter of indifference to him.
+
+But the girl's insistent friendliness troubled him.  He sat down again
+heavily in his seat and reflected deeply, sitting with his elbow on the
+arm of the chair and his chin sunk on his hands.  The gong sounded for
+luncheon, but he remained where he was and watched the rest go in, and
+listened to the talk and laughter which came to his ears through the
+open windows, until, after a while, the lunchers came out again, when he
+got up quietly and went inside.
+
+Esme, passing the open windows later on her way into the garden, saw the
+man seated alone at the table in the deserted room, eating in solitary
+discomfort, while the coloured servant cleared the table in a manner of
+sulky protest against this belated service.  She quickened her steps and
+her face flushed warmly.  She felt as though she had had her ears boxed.
+Indignant and angry, she walked as far as the vley and seated herself
+in the shade of the trees with a book, which she did not read, open on
+her lap.  She could not at the moment concentrate her attention on
+reading.  Her cheeks burned.  Twice this man had seemed to snub her,
+whether intentionally or not she could not determine; but she felt
+furious, less with the man than with herself for courting a repulse by
+her persistence.  Why should she seek to thrust her society on him when
+very clearly he did not desire it?  Her importunity embarrassed him.
+That thought rankled.  In a desire to be kind to a man whose lonely
+condition excited her compassion she had been guilty of intruding
+unwarrantably upon his seclusion.  What right had she to force her
+acquaintance upon him?  She had had her lesson; she would profit by it
+and not repeat the blunder.
+
+Idly she turned the pages of her book; but the printed matter upon which
+her eyes rested conveyed no meaning to her: between her vision and the
+open page a man's face obtruded itself, a face with fine, strongly
+marked features, and keen, unsmiling eyes.  She could not switch her
+thoughts off this man, in whom, she realised with a sort of impatience,
+she was more than ordinarily interested.  He piqued her curiosity.
+
+Oddly, the ugly fact which she had learned concerning him had not
+repelled her so much as deepened her sympathy.  She wondered about him;
+wondered what his life had been, what had made him, still a young man,
+derelict and at enmity with his fellows.  He had possibly suffered a
+great sorrow, she decided; and, womanlike, longed to know the nature of
+the tragedy which had spoilt his life.
+
+That his weakness awoke pity and not repugnance in her, filled her with
+a vague surprise.  She knew that in another man she would have
+considered the weakness contemptible.  Why should she except this man
+from censure in her thoughts when she would have held another unworthy
+for the same failing?  A person who drank to excess had always seemed
+horrible to her.  She would have shrunk in fear from a drunken man.  But
+she felt no shrinking from this man: she felt an almost motherly
+tenderness for him.  She would have liked to help him--with sympathy,
+with her friendship; and the only kindness she could do him was to
+humour his misanthropy and leave him to himself.
+
+When she passed him again on her return at the tea hour she took no
+notice of him, but walked along the stoep with an air of not seeing him,
+and yet with a mind so intent on him that a consciousness of this
+penetrated his understanding, possibly because he in his turn was
+thinking about her with a curiosity equal to her own, with an interest
+which surpassed hers.
+
+He followed her with his glance until she reached the open window of the
+dining-room and disappeared within.  He did not move.  Tea was a meal he
+never attended; he did not drink tea.  When Esme came out again on to
+the stoep his chair was empty.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER FIVE.
+
+The frankness of Esme's nature was opposed to the role of dignified
+silence, which she assumed deliberately out of consideration for the man
+who had shown so plainly his objection to social amenities.  She was
+resolved that unless he spoke to her she would not address him again.
+
+The event of his venturing on a spontaneous remark was so improbable
+that it seemed unlikely that the silence between them would be broken.
+To sit daily at meals beside a person with whom the exchange of the
+ordinary commonplace is denied becomes embarrassing.  His silent
+presence caused her to feel uncomfortable and unhappy.  Had it been
+possible to do so without exciting remark she would have changed her
+seat.
+
+Her old friend on her right helped her largely in this difficulty.  He
+made himself particularly agreeable to his young companion.  But his
+conversational efforts rendered the other man's silence more marked; and
+the awkwardness of sitting down to breakfast without offering a friendly
+good-morning appalled her in view of the many breakfasts which must
+follow with increasing strain each morning during her stay.
+
+The point which troubled her most in regard to her new line of conduct
+was the certainty that the man who had furnished her with the gratuitous
+information concerning Hallam would conclude that the frozen alteration
+in her demeanour was the result of his unsought confidence.  Absurdly,
+she wanted him to know that this breaking off of all intercourse was on
+Hallam's initiative and not hers.  It was a little thing to trouble her;
+but it did trouble her exceedingly.  She did not wish Sinclair to think
+that because of what he had told her she was treating with contempt a
+man for whom she felt no contempt in her heart--nothing but compassion.
+
+In accordance with the arrangement that had been made the previous day
+she accompanied Sinclair down the kloof; but her pleasure in the
+excursion was not so keen as it had been in anticipation; she was
+prejudiced slightly against her companion.  She suggested going in a
+party; but he refused to entertain the idea.  He hated crowds, he said.
+
+"I took a party down one day," he explained, "and they just fooled about
+and dug up ferns.  Desecration, I call it.  The ferns were thrown away,
+of course.  That's what happens.  People must pick things.  I wonder
+why?  Sheer destructiveness.  I like to see things growing."
+
+He was helpful and agreeable during the walk; and his appreciation of
+everything when they descended into the green twilight of the kloof
+pleased the girl: she shared in his enthusiasm.  She stood silent amid
+the cool, green restfulness of this shadowed place, and viewed with
+amazed eyes the wonder of its vegetation which grew in a tangled
+luxuriance of varying shades of green; particularly she noticed the long
+trailing moss which hung festooned from the trees over the stream; the
+longer trails of clinging vine that wound itself about every plant and
+tree and linked the whole together in an ordered and pleasing confusion.
+Huge boulders, lichen covered, stood out of the water which purled
+round them, and, with the brown trunks of the trees, struck the only
+separate note of colour in a scene that was wholly green and lit with a
+soft green light.  The sun did not penetrate here through the massed
+foliage of the locked boughs overhead.  There was no view of the sky.
+The stream wound in and out among the loose stones like a narrow
+footpath cut through the dense vegetation.  Ferns grew rankly beside the
+water, in the water, in the crevices of the boulders, and in the rotting
+trunks of trees.  Maidenhair ferns were everywhere with long succulent
+fronds, and the feathery leaves of the wild asparagus trailed gracefully
+above the banks.
+
+Esme gazed about her in silent wonder; and her companion stood beside
+her and watched her pleasure in the scene.
+
+"Makes one feel good, doesn't it?" he said.
+
+She turned to him reluctantly.  His voice had broken the quiet spell of
+the place and caught her back from enchantment to everyday things.
+
+"I want to sit on one of those boulders," was all she said.  "I want
+just to rest and be still."
+
+"Yes," he said.  "But when you are rested we'll explore a bit.  It's
+worth it.  It goes on like this for ever so far, opening out and closing
+in again between green walls.  It's difficult to break through in
+places; but I'll go first and make a clearing for you.  Take my hand.
+These stones are treacherous."
+
+"I'm glad you brought me here," she said, accepting his aid readily.
+"I'm glad I came.  I've never seen anything quite like this before.
+It's wonderful.  You are right: one can imagine wild beasts here.  One
+can imagine anything here... snakes.  I should be terribly frightened if
+I saw a snake."
+
+She sat on a large boulder with her hands clasping her knees, and peered
+into the black-green shadows nervously.  The man, standing upon the
+stones which just escaped the water, watched her with an expression of
+interest and of satisfaction in his eyes.  The grace of her unstudied
+pose, the serious look on the bright, fair face, appealed pleasantly to
+him.  In his preoccupation he scarcely heeded what she said, until she
+turned her face and looked up at him inquiringly.
+
+"Are there snakes here?" she asked.
+
+"I don't know.  I've not seen one.  I think we are more likely to
+discover them higher up.  They like warmth.  It is always wise to tread
+cautiously though."
+
+"Ugh!"  She drew her feet a little higher above the water and shivered
+apprehensively and looked about her.  "It rather spoils one's enjoyment,
+thinking of these things."
+
+"Don't think of them," he returned.  "There are plenty of people in
+Africa and plenty of snakes, but it's very rarely that we hear of any
+one being bitten.  I come here often; it's the only cool place on a hot
+day."
+
+"Well, I shan't come here often--although I love it," she added.
+"Anything might happen here.  It's difficult to believe that the sun is
+shining somewhere--blazing right over our heads.  Here it is always
+twilight, which later will deepen into night.  It's lovely, with a sort
+of eerie beauty.  I don't want to talk.  I want just to enjoy it and be
+quiet."
+
+He understood her mood.  The place had impressed him in much the same
+way when he first beheld it.  Familiarity with it had made its wild
+beauty less assertively striking; but the girl's keen pleasure in
+everything recalled his own earlier impressions and added to them.  He
+strolled off and left her in undisturbed contemplation while he explored
+along the bank of the stream and considered the best spots to show her
+when she wearied of inactivity and expressed the wish to go on.
+
+But Esme's mind at the moment was detached from her surroundings.  She
+was thinking very earnestly of the man who held aloof from friendship,
+who seemed to regard with mistrust, almost with dislike, every one about
+him.  She had never before met any one who was at enmity with mankind.
+The experience interested her immensely, troubled her.  It occurred to
+her as altogether sad and incomprehensible that a man should shun his
+fellows and enclose himself in a stronghold of impenetrable reserve.
+She longed to pierce the hard crust of his egotism, to draw him out of
+himself.  It was unthinkable that a man of intelligence should be
+misanthropic from choice and without cause.  Possibly at some time he
+had suffered, been badly hurt by some one.  Yet it was difficult to
+believe that a man could vent on the world at large his sense of injury
+for the fault of an individual.
+
+She leaned down towards the water and looked into its still brown pools
+and frowned thoughtfully.  It vexed her that this man should have laid
+such a grip on her imagination: his personality obtruded itself
+persistently on her thoughts.  The thing was beginning to worry her.
+
+She turned her head to look for her companion.  He was not in sight.
+Abruptly a feeling of loneliness, a loneliness that was almost
+terrifying, seized her.  That Sinclair was somewhere near at hand she
+knew, but the sense of being alone in that eerie spot frightened her;
+the silence of the place frightened her.  Yet when the silence snapped
+suddenly, and her attention was caught by the sound of some one or
+something breaking through the undergrowth and coming towards her, her
+fear of these sounds was greater than her fear of the silence.  She
+wanted to move, wanted to cry out; and she could not move, could not
+utter a word.  She sat staring in the direction of the noise, staring,
+and waiting for she knew not what.
+
+The sounds were not made by Sinclair; they came from the opposite
+direction to that which he had taken.  Thoughts of wild beasts flashed
+into her mind.  She wondered what she would do if out of the green
+tangle a tiger suddenly appeared.  She believed that she would do
+nothing, that she would remain there staring, rooted to the spot.  The
+crashing sounds grew louder, came nearer.  She saw the boughs bend,
+their massed foliage shake and quiver as if a wind swept through it.  A
+branch snapped loudly.  Then out of the swaying greenery a man's arm
+protruded, and the next moment Hallam emerged and stood still, looking
+at her with a surprise greater than her own.  Esme gave a little gulp of
+relief and laughed weakly.
+
+"Oh?" she said, and sat still clutching at the boulder with her hands.
+
+"Did I frighten you?" he asked.
+
+She nodded without speaking; and he advanced a little nearer to her, and
+stood still again, leaning on his stick.
+
+"I'm sorry.  I had no idea any one was here.  You aren't alone?"
+
+"No.  Mr Sinclair is somewhere--over there.  I thought--I thought you
+were a tiger."
+
+Involuntarily he smiled.
+
+"You've been listening to the chatter at the hotel," he said.
+
+"It's stupid, I know."  She tapped her foot on a stone with a movement
+of impatience and looked away from him.  "It's easy to imagine anything
+in this jungle.  There is something awesome even in its beauty."
+
+"It's the dim light," he said, "and the suggestion of things hidden from
+sight.  With your nerves you should remain in the sunlight."
+
+Esme laughed suddenly.  She turned her face towards him again and
+scrutinised him with greater attentiveness.
+
+"Yes," she said.  "I like the sunlight.  I like things which are
+revealed and comprehensive; the furtiveness of secrecy terrifies me.  I
+prefer to move in the open."
+
+"And miss the surprises which life conceals," he said.
+
+"I hadn't thought of that.  But I'm not particularly inquisitive," she
+replied.
+
+Why it should vex her to see him smile at this, she did not know; but
+that he did smile, and that she resented his doing so, was certain.  She
+flushed and looked round for her escort, whom she now saw coming towards
+them, leaping agilely across the boulders in the stream.  He showed
+surprise on seeing Hallam; his manner was not cordial.
+
+"If you are rested, we'll go on," he said, addressing himself to Esme.
+
+She stood up.  Hallam raised his hat and turned back in the direction
+whence he had come.  The girl felt sorry as she watched him go; she
+would have liked it had he joined their walk.  But she believed that to
+propose such a thing would have been acceptable neither to him nor to
+Sinclair.  In any case he would probably have declined.  Already the
+ice, so unexpectedly broken, was forming again, a thin crust of
+resistance upon the surface of his temporary geniality.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER SIX.
+
+That night Esme lay wakeful in the darkness with a brain too active for
+sleep, courting slumber, which refused to come to her aid, physically
+tired, yet not overtired, and mentally very clear and wide awake.
+
+Outside her window the crickets were chirruping noisily, and in the warm
+darkness, which pressed about her as she lay wide-eyed and very still in
+her narrow white bed, the mosquitoes hummed annoyingly close to her
+ears.  The sounds of people moving in the rooms adjoining hers had
+ceased long since; the night was quiet, with the listening hush which
+settles upon a place when the activities of the day are ended and people
+sleep.  It seemed to Esme that she alone of all the household was awake.
+
+She believed that it must be long past midnight.  It had not as a matter
+of fact struck twelve o'clock; and some one besides herself was awake,
+had not yet gone to bed.  She heard him go later; heard a stumbling step
+going clumsily and heavily along the stoep.  Through the thin walls the
+noise of the footsteps was distinctly audible.  She lay still on her
+pillow and listened to them, her heart beating quickly and the pulses in
+her temples throbbing like tiny hammers.  A sick horror gripped her.
+She knew, without seeing the man, who it was who thus disturbed the
+silence, and, with the uncertain blundering step of a man under the
+influence of drink, lurched heavily along the stoep to his room.  He
+made so much noise in getting there that she felt certain all the
+occupants of the rooms he passed would wake and hear him.
+
+Her cheeks burned with shame for him, and her heart was filled with a
+great pity.  What joy could he derive from this terrible misuse of life?
+What a waste of his manhood and of his intellect!
+
+With the cessation of the sounds a deeper hush than before seemed to
+settle upon the night; even the crickets became less insistent: the
+world slept; every one slept, save herself.  She alone of all the
+household kept wakeful vigil until the dawn broke, and brought with its
+hopeful promise of a new day rest and forgetfulness to her weary brain.
+
+Esme woke late, and had barely time to dress before the gong sounded for
+breakfast.  With a curious reluctance to meet again the man whose noisy
+movements had disturbed her overnight, she went into the coffee-room and
+seated herself at table.  Hallam's seat was empty.  It was still empty
+when she rose at the finish of breakfast and went out on to the stoep
+into the sunshine.
+
+She was relieved that she had been spared the ordeal of meeting him, of
+sitting beside him while the memory of last night was still so painfully
+vivid in her thoughts.  Her whole being shrank from witnessing his
+degradation.  He must feel, far more acutely than she felt for him, the
+embarrassment of appearing in public, of meeting the criticism in
+unsympathetic eyes.
+
+She played tennis during the morning, and played badly; her heart was
+not in the game, and the careless gaiety of her companions jarred on her
+sober mood.  They rallied her on her preoccupation, until she pleaded a
+headache; when Sinclair, leaving the others to play singles, led her
+away to a quiet corner in the garden where she could sit and rest.
+
+He was glad to get her alone.  He was leaving on the morrow, going back
+to his job in a stuffy office in a dull little town.
+
+"Uitenhage is about the sleepiest hole in South Africa," he grumbled.
+
+"I think it is lovely," the girl returned.  "I went there once when the
+roses were in bloom."
+
+"Oh! it's pretty enough.  And it's handy to the Bay.  I shall look you
+up when you return--may I?"
+
+"I shall be very pleased," she answered.  "But you'll have to choose a
+holiday.  I am going back to my job too.  I teach music."
+
+"Oh, really!  That's fairly strenuous, I should think.  What a bore for
+you."
+
+She laughed.
+
+"It's my bread and butter.  There are less pleasant methods of making a
+livelihood.  But of course one gets tired."
+
+He nodded sympathetically.
+
+"I want you to rest this afternoon and get rid of the headache.  I'd
+like to take you for a walk after dinner if you care about going.  It's
+my last night.  Until you came there was no one to walk with--except
+Hallam.  And he's such an unsociable beast.  I wish you wouldn't talk to
+him.  He is not a suitable companion for you."
+
+"Don't say those things," she interposed quickly.  "It's ungenerous."
+
+She felt angry with Sinclair, felt an inexplicable necessity to defend
+the man he spoke of in such slighting terms.  It was not merely because
+he was absent and unable to defend himself; there was something more
+than that to account for her indignation; she realised that much without
+understanding its nature.  Never in all her life had she met any one who
+interested her so profoundly, who so deeply stirred her pity.  She
+wanted to help this man--with her friendship.  There was no other
+thought in her mind.  And he would not let her.  He demanded simply to
+be left alone.  A girl could not thrust her friendship on a man who did
+not want it.  But she could defend him in her thoughts and in her speech
+without fear of his resentment.
+
+"I think Mr Hallam is a very remarkable man," she said.  "I should
+hesitate to criticise him."
+
+Sinclair looked at her in surprise.
+
+"Do you know," he said, "that is the second time I have annoyed you in
+reference to the same subject."
+
+"Not annoyed," she corrected,--"disappointed me, rather.  I hate to hear
+a man speak disparagingly of another."
+
+The young man was vexed, and showed it.  Her ready championship of
+Hallam displeased him.  It was a sort of feminine instinct, he supposed,
+to shed the light of a tender compassion on the derelict.  Women were
+absurdly sentimental.
+
+"You do jump on a fellow," he said, aggrieved.  "I had no idea you would
+take my words amiss.  Forget them, please."
+
+"And you forget my irritable mood."
+
+She smiled at him with kind brown eyes, eyes which expressed liking in
+fuller measure than their displeasure of a moment before.  She regretted
+her outburst.  What did it concern her what he thought, what any one
+thought of a man who was almost a stranger to her, whom a few days ago
+she did not know.
+
+"I slept badly last night," she added, as if to account for her
+ill-humour.
+
+"How was that?" he asked, more with a view to turning the talk than from
+curiosity.
+
+His question recalled the ugly memories of the night very vividly to
+her.  She heard again in imagination the stumbling footsteps going along
+the stoep.  Her face clouded.
+
+"What does keep one wakeful at times?" she inquired.  "The mind works, I
+suppose.  I think perhaps I was tired."
+
+"I took you too far," he said contritely.  "It was inconsiderate of me.
+But you seemed so interested."
+
+"I was.  I wouldn't have missed a bit of it.  It was worth a sleepless
+night."
+
+"I doubt whether I should consider anything worth the sacrifice of a
+night's sleep," he said, and laughed.  "It would take a lot to spoil my
+rest.  The air here acts like a narcotic with me."
+
+"That's odd," she said.  "It makes me alert.  There's something in the
+atmosphere of this place--I don't know what it is--which influences me
+strangely.  I go about in a state of expectant curiosity.  I'm looking
+for things to happen.  That's absurd, I know; but the feeling's there."
+
+He scrutinised her intently.  In this lonely spot what could happen out
+of the ordinary run of events?  Nothing surely in the nature of change--
+unless the change were in one's self.
+
+"The state of your mind is provocative," he said.  "By invoking things
+to happen you may precipitate a crisis.  It is always a dangerous
+practice to tempt the gods."
+
+"I don't agree with that.  I'm something of a fatalist," she said.  "I
+believe, not that our lives are prearranged, but that the event which
+happens is inevitable, that we must accept things as they come to us.
+The manner of our acceptance alone is left to our choice."
+
+"I should hesitate to adopt that theory," he said.  "I like to feel that
+I have some say in the arrangement of my life.  According to your idea a
+man might hold himself immune for any evil he contrived.  It relieves
+the individual of all responsibility."
+
+"No."  She flushed slightly.  "The qualities of good and evil are ours
+to develop at will.  The individual is always responsible for his own
+nature."
+
+"I don't like your theory any better as you enlarge it," he replied.
+"It's rough on any one to have to keep good with all the odds against
+him.  And if he fail, what then?"
+
+"I don't believe in complete human failure," she answered quietly.  "Do
+you?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He was thinking of Hallam, considering him a fair example of failure;
+she also was thinking of Hallam, but with greater kindness.  Derelict
+though the man appeared, the belief held with her that one day he would
+pull himself together and make good.  She got up suddenly.
+
+"We are growing too serious," she said; "and it's nearly lunch time.
+What a blessed break in the day one's meals make."
+
+Hallam was in his accustomed seat when she returned, but he did not look
+up when she passed him on her way inside.  He was reading a newspaper.
+His hands, holding the printed sheet, shook more than usual, she
+fancied; otherwise he looked much the same.  She believed that he was
+aware of her presence, though he made no sign that he saw her.  She
+passed him and entered the narrow passage and went direct to her room.
+An unaccountable shyness had come over her.  She shrank from going into
+lunch, shrank from the thought of sitting beside him in the embarrassing
+silence which his taciturnity imposed.  The thing was getting on her
+nerves.  In the case of any other man, she believed that she would not
+have minded this blunt ungraciousness; but this man had the power to
+hurt her.  The thing was incomprehensible and astonished her greatly.
+Why should his behaviour wound her when in another man it would merely
+have given offence?
+
+The gong for luncheon sounded; but still she lingered in her room,
+reluctant to leave this quiet haven for the dining-room and the
+disquieting influence of her unresponsive neighbour.  But the ordeal had
+to be faced.  It was ridiculous to allow her nervousness to get the
+upper hand.  With an action that was almost violent in the suddenness of
+her resolve, she opened the door, and stepping into the passage went
+swiftly along to the dining-room.  At the door of the dining-room she
+and Hallam met face to face.  He was going in, but he drew back to allow
+her to precede him.  Thanking him briefly, she passed him and went on
+and took her seat.  He followed leisurely.  When he was seated and
+waiting to be served, he turned to her with unexpected suddenness and
+observed:
+
+"You missed a great deal this morning through oversleeping.  I have
+never seen a finer sunrise in my life than the one I witnessed on my
+walk."
+
+"You were up at sunrise?"
+
+Her surprised tone, the almost incredulous look in her eyes, drew a
+wondering glance from him.  She saw it and felt furious with herself for
+her stupidity.  She had imagined him sleeping late that morning, had
+supposed his non-appearance at breakfast was the result of his overnight
+excess; and she had been tactless enough to betray surprise on learning
+that he had been abroad so early.  She flushed with confusion and
+averted her eyes.
+
+"I am always up before the sun," he said.  "I do most of my walking
+before breakfast.  It's the best time of the day."
+
+"Yes," she agreed; "I suppose it is.  I slept late."
+
+An inexplicable vindictiveness came over her.  She turned to him again
+and added almost brusquely:
+
+"I was extraordinarily wakeful last night.  I did not get to sleep
+before the dawn broke."
+
+"You should cultivate the habit of sleeping in a hurry," he advised.  "I
+get all the rest I need in a few hours."
+
+He began to eat.  She watched him for a moment in silence and with a
+swift compunction for her recent ill-humour.
+
+"I am sorry I missed the sunrise," she said, relenting, and wishful to
+make amends.  "Tell me about it."
+
+He smiled faintly.
+
+"Can any one describe a sunrise?" he asked.  "Are there any words in our
+language which will paint nature in her most wonderful aspects?  If
+there are I am ignorant of them.  You must go out and see these things
+for yourself."
+
+This was not encouraging, but she persevered.  A sort of inflexible
+determination to abolish finally the frigid distances he insistently
+maintained armed her with a temporary bravado which amazed herself.  It
+probably amazed him equally, but he made no sign if so.
+
+"I do not like seeing things by myself.  Won't you let me accompany you
+some morning?"
+
+"Most assuredly," he answered, after a barely perceptible hesitation.
+"But quite possibly you will miss your breakfast.  I tramp far."
+
+"I shall not complain," she said.  "If you are equal to fasting I have
+no doubt I can stand it."
+
+Hallam looked quietly amused.  He surveyed her quite steadily for the
+fraction of a second, and then very deliberately turned his attention
+again to his plate.
+
+"Do you really think," he asked presently, "that your endurance is equal
+to mine?  You don't look to me very strong."
+
+She was thinking the same about him, but she did not voice her thought.
+Possibly he read what she was thinking in her face when he glanced again
+momentarily towards her; whether this were so or not, he added after a
+pause:
+
+"My constitution is made of cast iron.  If it were not it would have
+broken down long ago.  Notwithstanding that my hand has difficulty in
+raising this glass without spilling its contents, I could lift you with
+it as easily as I could lift a feather."
+
+She looked at the hand stretched out towards the glass of milk and soda
+beside his plate, and noticed how it shook, and wondered that he should
+draw her attention to it.  He had done so intentionally, mastering his
+usual self-consciousness in regard to this physical defect, for what
+reason she failed to understand.  Oddly, she felt no embarrassment while
+she looked at his hand, and he betrayed none either.  He lifted the
+glass unsteadily and drank from it and set it down again on the cloth.
+
+"I have travelled for a week on a pocketful of dried mealies, and been
+none the worse for it," he said.  "But I shouldn't recommend that diet
+for you."
+
+"I think," she said unexpectedly and without annoyance, "that you don't
+wish to be bothered with my company."
+
+"From the fear that I may have to carry you?" he suggested.  "You are
+mistaken.  If you like to be energetic to-morrow I will show you where
+best to view the sunrise.  And I promise you that if we miss our
+breakfast here I will take you to a house where I can obtain a meal at
+any hour of the day."
+
+"You breakfasted there this morning?" she said, turning a face flushed
+with pleasure to his.
+
+"I breakfasted there this morning.  They are accustomed to my irregular
+habits, and they don't mind."
+
+"That will be nice," she said.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"I hope you won't be disappointed."
+
+"Disappointed in what?--the sunrise, or the breakfast?"
+
+"I pay you the compliment of supposing that such material pleasures as
+food do not interest you," he returned; "nevertheless, you will find the
+fare sufficient.  The air in the early morning is chilly, so dress
+warmly."
+
+With which advice he closed the conversation as resolutely as a man who,
+talking over a telephone, shuts off communication by replacing the
+receiver.  He bent over his plate and went on eating as though he had
+forgotten entirely the girl's existence.  He finished his breakfast
+before she did and got up and went out by the window.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER SEVEN.
+
+During the twenty-two unenlivening and, latterly, busy years of her life
+Esme Lester had never been in love, had not known the excitement which
+many girls of her age enjoy of possessing a lover.  She was not a
+sentimental young woman, and she had not had much time in which to
+indulge in these distractions.  The woman who earns her livelihood has
+her mind occupied with graver matters generally.  Love, if it succeed in
+penetrating her preoccupation, takes her usually unaware and remains
+sometimes unsuspected for quite an appreciable while.
+
+It was possibly not love which in the early stages of their acquaintance
+aroused her interest in Hallam.  Mainly her feeling for him was a
+mixture of womanly compassion and of repugnance so intense that at times
+it shouldered pity into the background, and left her chilled with
+disgust for his weakness and bitterly ashamed for him.
+
+Her acquaintance with Hallam developed surprisingly.  The occasion of
+their walk to view the sunrise advanced it to a stage of easy intimacy.
+The tentacles of friendship reached out and struck deep into the natures
+of both.  The man accepted rather than welcomed the change in their
+relations.  He deplored, despite its agreeableness, the growing intimacy
+as something dangerous to his peace, something which might not be
+pursued and developed beyond a certain point, which, because of its
+limitation, was disturbing and undesirable.  No man cares to set a
+boundary line to his intercourse with a woman who attracts him;
+immediately with the appearance of the barrier the desire to surmount it
+is bred.
+
+The state of Hallam's mind was that of paralysed initiative.  He was
+incapable of making any sustained effort.  He drifted into this
+friendship as he drifted into less desirable practices.  Hereditary
+tendencies and inclination both led him to follow his present mode of
+life; nor had it seemed to him in any degree shameful until this girl
+stepped suddenly across his path and altered his view of things.  But
+her influence was not yet sufficiently strong to cause him more than a
+passing regret for the waste he was making of life.  His life was his
+own affair; it was no one's business how he elected to use it.
+
+On the morning of their first walk together he came out on to the stoep,
+stick in hand, ready to start, and found Esme waiting for him.  He
+returned her greeting unsmilingly, and scrutinised her attentively with
+brows drawn together above the keen eyes.
+
+"You had better fetch a coat," he said.  "The morning air is chilly."
+
+"It is fresh," she agreed; "but I thought perhaps walking--it may be
+very hot before we return."
+
+"It probably will be," he replied.  "But I would prefer that you wore a
+coat.  When it gets hot I will carry it for you."
+
+Smiling, she went inside to follow his instruction.  When she came out
+again she wore a woollen sport's coat over her thin dress.
+
+"That's better," he said.  "It is unpleasant to feel cold."
+
+He walked down the little path beside her and out on to the open road.
+A pale mist, like a thin white fog, shrouded the prospect and lent a
+bracing coldness to the air, which felt fresh and clean with the crisp
+purity of mountain air, washed by the overnight dews.  The girl felt the
+benefit of the extra warmth of the coat; it was fresher than she had
+supposed out on the open road.  A little wind that had more than a touch
+of sharpness in its breath blew in their faces as they walked.
+
+"I had no idea the mornings were so good," she said.  "I've not been out
+so early before."
+
+"People miss more than they realise through lying between the sheets,"
+he said.  "In a country like this the bulk of the day's work should be
+accomplished before breakfast."
+
+"Is that the principle you act on?" she asked.
+
+He looked grimly ahead of him and was slow in replying.
+
+"That is the principle I should act upon if I did any work," he said at
+length.
+
+Esme lifted wondering eyes to his face.
+
+"It must be a great responsibility to be independent of work," she said.
+
+Hallam laughed suddenly.
+
+"Do you really think so?  Most people would reverse that opinion.  The
+weight of it does not press on me unduly."
+
+He flicked at the dust of the road with his stick and at the grass which
+grew beside the road, and was silent for a space.  When he spoke again
+it was on an entirely different subject.
+
+They were swinging along down the road at a smart pace, and with every
+yard of ground they covered the aspect of the land changed, became more
+luxuriant in its growth, and altogether more rugged and assertive.  The
+sky was flushed with a soft pink like the flush on the face of a child
+newly wakened from sleep.  Before them as they walked the mist rolled
+back, a gradually thinning vapour dispersing before the warmth of the
+coming day, revealing with a startling unexpectedness in its reluctant
+retreat the wonder of contrasting colour, the beauty of the curving road
+with the shadows of the trees across it, and the great green silences
+stretching above and below; the silence of the heights, and the more
+secretive silence of the hidden places in the furtive darkness of the
+gorge.
+
+The rose pink in the sky deepened, spread itself warmly over the blue
+expanse, reflected warmly upon the silent, neutral tinted world; changed
+the face of the land as it changed the face of the sky; brightening and
+intensifying the colour in the grass, in the leaves of the trees,
+painting the flowers wonderfully; transforming everything with the glow
+and warmth of life.  The world threw off its lethargy of slumber and
+lifted its face wakefully to the flood of sunlight which broke through
+the rose and azure in a flash of gold.
+
+Esme stood transfixed, with eyes turned to the sunrise.  She felt the
+warmth of the sun on her face, on her hands, on her body.  It was like
+being gripped in a warm embrace, startling and a little disconcerting by
+its very suddenness.  The gold of it poured over her like an amber
+flame.  The man, standing beside her, watched the sun-bathed, radiant
+figure, and saw the wonder in her eyes, and remained silent, attentive,
+marking nothing of the glory in the changing heavens, seeing only the
+startled gladness in a girl's sweet face, and the glowing brightness of
+her figure against the sunlit dust of the road.
+
+While he stood observing her the thought took shape in his mind and
+grew, as he watched her simple delight in what at another time would
+have delighted him equally, but which now he scarcely heeded, that it
+was an eternal shame he should of his own act, through his lack of
+endeavour, reduce himself to a level which divided him from her, and
+from women like her, as widely as the gorge was divided from the
+heights.  But a steep uphill road connected gorge and heights.  He
+looked down the road and up at the heights and frowned.  Then
+deliberately he turned his attention away from the girl and started idly
+to trace patterns with his stick in the dust.  She looked round at him
+with happy eyes, in which surprise gathered as she noted his
+preoccupation.
+
+"But you are not watching the sunrise!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It is disappointing," he replied.  "Yesterday it was finer.  It is one
+of nature's exhaustless perplexities that she never reveals herself in
+the same guise twice.  Shall we go on?"
+
+She started to walk again, a little chilled, she scarcely knew why, by
+his manner.  She decided that possibly he enjoyed best seeing these
+things alone.  Some people take their pleasures selfishly; he might be
+one of these.  To her the sunrise had been wonderful; and she longed to
+express her admiration, to share it; but this grave and silent companion
+made her silent also.  She felt disappointed.  He stole a glance at her
+serious face, and his features relaxed; a smile played about the corners
+of his mouth.
+
+"You had better take off your coat," he said.  "The sun soon makes his
+power felt."
+
+He helped her to remove the coat, and threw it over his shoulder and
+walked on, holding it with his disengaged hand.
+
+"If the people at the hotel could see us they would be amazed," he said.
+
+"Why?" she asked, a fine colour coming into her cheeks, which deepened
+as she met his eyes.
+
+"Because no one there has ever seen me do a service for any one," he
+replied.
+
+"Perhaps no one has demanded service of you," she said quietly.
+
+"No one has," he answered, with a certain grimness that suggested such a
+demand might have met with small response.  "In this instance I believe
+the idea originated with me."
+
+She laughed brightly.
+
+"You made me bring the coat," she said.  "It is only fair you should
+carry it."
+
+"I am not complaining.  When you are tired, say so, and we will rest by
+the wayside.  We have a long way to go yet; and I do not wish to carry
+you as well as your coat."
+
+Again she laughed brightly and looked up into his face with merry eyes.
+
+"You boasted that you could do that as easily as you could lift a
+feather.  I should not mind carrying a feather," she said.
+
+He looked down at her, quietly amused.
+
+"Think of the amazement at the hotel if I were seen carrying you back!"
+he said, and smiled at the quick flush which overspread her face.
+
+"I do not concern myself about the opinion of other people, as you
+appear to do," she retorted.
+
+"Very well," he replied.  "Then, when you are tired, say so, and I will
+support my boast in a practical manner."
+
+"I will consider your sensitiveness in preference to my comfort," she
+said.
+
+"You have not known me very long," he returned; "but in the time I
+should have thought that a person of ordinary discernment would have
+discovered that I possess no sensibilities to disturb."
+
+"I have discovered one or two things about you," she answered gently,
+"but not that."
+
+She felt relieved that he did not pursue the subject.  He lifted his
+stick and pointed with it away to the right, where the white wall of a
+building showed among the trees.
+
+"That is where we shall breakfast on our return," he said.
+
+"On our return!  Then you mean to go further?"
+
+"We shall walk a good mile--two miles, if you are equal to it--beyond
+the house," he said.  "The road gets more beautiful the further you
+travel.  But we will stop when you wish.  After you have breakfasted you
+shall rest as long as you like before making the journey back."
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER EIGHT.
+
+It seemed to Esme as they walked rapidly along in the clear light air
+that nature revealed herself in her fairest mood that morning.  Surely
+never had sunlight shone more golden, never had the blue of the sky
+appeared more intense, nor the veld glowed with such splendour of
+colour.  A blue haze, liquid in the golden light, quivered before her
+vision like a thing alive with iridescent wings outspread in the
+untempered sunlight that poured itself out upon the earth with a
+brilliance hurtful to the eyes.  Everywhere her gaze turned some fresh
+wonder met the view.  Green mingled with brown and orange, shot with
+vivid colours, where the hardy veld flowers blossomed in the grass and
+among the piles of hot-looking yellow stones by the side of the road.
+It was a scene of wide and glowing colour, of immense blue distances lit
+by the fierce flame of the sun.
+
+How much of her enjoyment was due to the beauty of the day, and how much
+to the companionship of the man who shared these things with her, she
+did not at the time pause to consider.  Her senses were steeped in the
+delight which is born of the mysterious magic of beauty.  Everywhere she
+looked she saw this magic pictured; in her heart she felt its influence;
+it permeated all her being, all her brain.  And again the expectation of
+adventure gripped her.  The belief that something was about to happen,
+something of tremendous personal importance, took hold of her
+imagination, stirred her deeply with a mingling of awe and joyous
+anticipation like nothing she had ever known before.  Something was
+going to happen to her; something surely had happened to her already to
+work this change in her calm practical nature.  For the first time in
+her quiet uneventful life her latent womanhood rose to the surface and
+found expression in a number of new emotions, emotions which she vaguely
+realised without understanding their significance.
+
+She felt intensely alive.  Her face was radiant with the joy of life.
+But she did not talk much.  Hallam was not a talkative companion, and
+his silence affected her.  Occasionally he paused to draw her attention
+to a particular spot; and once he called a halt and seated himself
+beside her in the shade of some bushes to rest.  When he was seated he
+lit his pipe.  He had brought apples with him, and he offered Esme one,
+and a knife to peel it with.  She returned the knife and set her teeth
+in the fruit and ate it with keen enjoyment.
+
+"I get these from a farm in the neighbourhood," he explained.  "You
+should walk there one day.  They grow quite good fruit, and they are
+always glad to see visitors.  It's not far from the hotel."
+
+"You appear to know every one around here," she remarked.
+
+"I have been here some months," he replied.
+
+"And you seek your friends outside the hotel?" she said.
+
+"I neither seek nor find friends," he answered bluntly.  "I have some
+slight acquaintance with these people which they do not discourage
+because it is profitable to them.  I do not understand disinterested
+friendship.  I do not believe in it."
+
+"Which is to say you have never felt a disinterested friendship for any
+one," she said.  "You don't know what you miss."
+
+"In that case, I miss nothing," he replied.  "One has to be conscious of
+a need in order to appreciate its absence.  Life is a huge business of
+bluff.  A few persons only remain sincere because they will not take the
+trouble to pose.  To be sincere is to become unpopular.  But
+unpopularity is less irksome than maintaining a pose of sociability.  I
+believe there are very few people who honestly love their kind."
+
+"That is too cynical a belief to be worth discussing," she said, pausing
+with the half eaten fruit in her hand to look at him with puzzled eyes.
+He seemed amused rather than vexed at her answer, and smoked for a
+moment reflectively before resuming the talk.
+
+"I doubt whether you are quite sincere in making that assertion," he
+contended.  "It is an easy way of disposing of a subject which one feels
+unequal to combat in argument.  Friendship is mere sentiment, so is love
+of one's fellows; let either interfere with self-interest, and what
+becomes of it?  It is only with a few rare souls that altruism becomes a
+workable theory."
+
+"So long as there are a few souls great enough for disinterested love,"
+she said quietly, "there is a little light of hope in the world."
+
+She got up and threw away the remains of the apple as though her
+pleasure in the fruit were spoiled.  She hated this cynical bitter talk;
+at the moment she almost hated the speaker.  Because of his own wasted
+life, his morbid views and perverted ideals, he was trying to poison her
+mind with the hopeless doctrine of his deliberate self-deception.  There
+was something mean in her opinion in this wilful attempt to darken the
+world for others.
+
+"Let us go on," she said.  "Active exercise puts you in a better mood.
+I do not like your ideas.  I'm sorry; but I don't wish to listen to
+them."
+
+"No one likes my ideas," he answered, rising.  "I don't like them
+myself.  Truth is rarely agreeable; that is why so many people affect
+lies.  I think we had better turn and see about breakfast.  Your lack of
+patience suggests to me that you are hungry."
+
+She broke into a laugh.  At the sound of her mirth his face cleared
+immediately; he stood still in the road and looked at her curiously.
+
+"I am glad that the sun still shines," he said, and started again to
+walk along the uphill path.
+
+It was rather a silent walk back to the little house among the trees.
+Esme felt shy at having been so outspoken.  He had taken her rebuke in
+good part; she liked him for that.  She liked, too, the quiet way in
+which he assumed command of herself and of everything when they reached
+the house and stepped up to the little stoep.  He presented a new and
+more forceful side to his character.
+
+The woman of the house fetched two chairs at his request, which she
+placed side by side in a corner of the stoep beyond the reach of the
+sun's rays that fell slantwise upon the white stone floor under the low
+roof.  Hallam separated the chairs and pushed a little deal table
+between them and sat down opposite the girl.
+
+"It is pleasanter to eat out of doors," he said.  "I didn't consult your
+wishes, because I knew it was unnecessary to do so.  And even if you
+preferred breakfasting inside it would not be good for you."
+
+"I am satisfied with your choice," she answered, smiling, and took off
+her hat and dropped it on the floor.  "I could eat anywhere; I am so
+hungry."
+
+"Good!" he exclaimed, looking pleased, and surveying her across the
+narrow table, which the housewife had spread with a much-darned
+snow-white cloth.
+
+It gave him an odd satisfaction to see her there, seated opposite to
+him, hatless and very much at her ease, a pleasing picture of fresh
+bright girlhood, with the glow of returning health showing in her
+cheeks.
+
+The woman came out from the house and made further preparations towards
+their meal.  Occasionally she addressed a remark to Hallam; but she was
+not loquacious.  She stared a good deal at his companion: it doubtless
+caused her surprise to see him with any one.  During all the months
+since he first came to her house he had never brought a friend with him
+before.  She was obviously familiar with Hallam's requirements.  Without
+consulting him she placed a glass of milk on the table beside him, and
+inquired whether the lady drank tea or coffee.  Esme looked at the glass
+of milk and made up her mind quickly.
+
+"Neither.  I will have milk also," she said.
+
+The woman departed with the order, and the girl and the man sat gazing
+out on the sunny road and saying nothing.  But the silence which hung
+between them was the silence of comradeship.  There was an absence of
+all constraint in their manner; they were like old friends between whom
+speech is unnecessary.
+
+With the arrival of breakfast the girl drew her chair nearer the table,
+and served the omelette and passed his plate across to Hallam; assisting
+him unobtrusively, because of the shaking of his hands and his pitiful
+consciousness of it.  The sight of those nervous unsteady hands hurt
+her.  She was always painfully aware of them and keenly anxious to
+conceal the fact.  She observed that the man endeavoured to control
+their trembling, and that his inability to do so distressed him.  He
+bent low over his plate.  It was this habit of bending over his meals
+and of looking down when he walked which caused the stoop of the
+shoulders, giving him an appearance of ill health.
+
+While she ate and attended to his needs and her own she wondered about
+him.  What could be the secret of his downfall?  Life had been generous
+to him in some respects; possibly in other, more important matters, it
+had treated him ill.  She continued her study of him while she sat at
+the little table opposite to him and watched the sunlight slowly
+encroaching on the patch of shade in which they breakfasted.  Before
+they had finished their meal it had reached Hallam, dividing them like a
+curtain of fire which wrapped him about in its radiant warmth and left
+her in the shadows.
+
+"Hadn't you better move your seat?" she suggested.  "The sun strikes on
+your head."
+
+He got up, dragged his chair nearer to hers, and sat down again.  Their
+chairs were side by side now.  She leaned back in hers and smiled at
+him.
+
+"This is infinitely pleasanter than breakfasting at a long table among a
+crowd.  They will wonder at the hotel what has become of me."
+
+"They will certainly never suppose that you are in my company," he said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+A dry smile twisted his lips.  He scrutinised her for a brief moment,
+and then answered abruptly:
+
+"They wouldn't credit the possibility of my inviting you to come."
+
+"You didn't," she answered, and laughed with amusement.  The laugh was
+infectious; Hallam joined in it.
+
+"I wish you hadn't such an awkward memory for blunt facts," he said.  "I
+know I was abominably rude.  I am always rude.  As a rule that doesn't
+trouble me; but in your case I regret my lack of manners."
+
+"I did not notice it," she replied.  "I think perhaps I was preoccupied
+with the lack of manners betrayed on my part.  You must think me rather
+pushing."
+
+Again he smiled dryly, but in the keen eyes shone a kindly look.
+
+"One day, if it will interest you to hear it," he said, "I will tell you
+what I think of you.  But at the moment I do not feel equal to so much
+frankness.  If you have finished breakfast, let me carry your chair into
+the shade of the trees.  Since there is no one to whom your absence will
+cause anxiety we will suit our own convenience as to the time of our
+return."
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER NINE.
+
+The two or three guests at the hotel who witnessed Esme's return in the
+company of Hallam were filled with amazement at the unusual spectacle of
+the man who was never known to associate with any one, walking beside
+the girl and carrying her coat across his shoulder, with an air of being
+on perfectly friendly terms with his companion and with himself.  The
+two were laughing when they neared the gate; but the man's expression
+settled into its habitual boredom as he followed the girl up the path
+and mounted the steps on to the stoep.
+
+He removed the coat from his shoulder and handed it to her with a brief
+smile.
+
+"I have enjoyed my walk," he said.  "Thank you."
+
+"Thank _you_ for taking me," she answered, conscious of the curious eyes
+observing her.  "I have enjoyed it also."
+
+Then she went inside.  Hallam waited for a minute or two before
+entering, the hotel, while the people on the stoep watched him, puzzled
+and immensely interested in these proceedings.  He did not appear to
+notice them; and presently he went in, and the restraint which his
+presence always imposed on the rest relaxed perceptibly.
+
+They started to discuss him, to deplore his friendship with the girl;
+they pondered the question whether it was the particular duty of any one
+to warn her against pursuing the acquaintance: every one thought that
+she ought to be warned; but no one volunteered to undertake this
+friendly office; they were all a little in awe of the man of whom they
+disapproved.
+
+Esme went to her room with the intention of remaining there and writing
+letters until lunch time.  She was tired and wanted to rest.  But while
+she sat at her window with her writing materials on her knee she saw
+Sinclair approaching from the direction of the garden beyond the
+kei-apple hedge.  She remembered that he was leaving that morning.  The
+early walk, and her pleasure in it, had caused her to forget.
+
+He strolled as far as the vley, and stood by the edge, moodily kicking
+little stones into the water.  He looked up and saw her at the window
+and looked away again, making pretence that he did not know she was
+there.  She leaned out and spoke to him.
+
+"Isn't it a perfectly wonderful day?" she called softly.
+
+"Is it?" he said, and came towards her slowly, frowning, and with his
+hands in his pockets.  "It's much like any other day, I think."
+
+He leaned with his shoulder against the wall of the house, and regarded
+her with sulky reproach as she sat on the low sill, facing him, smiling
+into the hurt boyish eyes.  She liked him, and he was going away.  She
+decided to ignore his irritable mood.
+
+"It's the finish of your holiday," she said, "and you are sorry.  In a
+fortnight's time my holiday will have ended.  I, too, shall regret
+leaving this place."
+
+"It is not the place I mind leaving; it's dull enough," he said
+ungraciously.  "There is nothing to do except moon around.  Where did
+you have breakfast this morning?"
+
+"At a little house along the road.  I went to see the sun rise."
+
+"It is possible to view that astronomical phenomenon from your bedroom
+window," he retorted disagreeably.
+
+"I dare say it is.  But I wanted the walk."
+
+"You went with Hallam, I suppose?" he said.  And, without waiting for
+her reply, added: "I think you might have remembered that it was my last
+morning.  I would have taken you to see the sun rise if you had
+expressed the desire.  I counted on a last walk."
+
+"I walked with you last night," she said, surprised at the extravagance
+of his demands.
+
+"I am not forgetting that," he said, with less aggression in his manner.
+"But my last morning...  I think it was a little unkind.  There will be
+plenty of opportunities for sun-gazing after I have gone.  I am full up
+with things I want to say to you, and you seem such a long way off,
+perched up there."
+
+She laughed, and twisted round on the sill preparatory to alighting.
+
+"Look the other way for a minute.  I'm coming out."
+
+He swung round with a pleased smile, and before she realised what he was
+about he had seized her by the waist and lifted her down.  She stood on
+the grass beside him and surveyed him with amazed eyes.
+
+"Well!" she said.
+
+"It was by far the easier way," he excused himself.  "I have a couple of
+chairs fixed up under the trees.  It's jolly and cool in the garden."
+
+He led her to the spot he had selected and settled her in one of the two
+canvas chairs, which faced towards a little arbour covered with a pale,
+cool-looking creeper with long sprays of minute white blossoms thrusting
+out between the leaves.  The chairs had been placed at the end of the
+roughly made path, and stood side by side with their backs towards the
+house.  Esme dropped into one, and looked about her with lazy
+satisfaction.  It was restful out here under the trees, and strangely
+quiet.  The hum of the bees sounded reposeful in the sunny stillness.
+She felt very tired, and was glad to sit still.  She did not want to
+talk.  But it was not possible to sit in silence with this man, as it
+was with Hallam.  The necessity to make conversation was imperative.  It
+surprised and puzzled her that this was so.
+
+She glanced at Sinclair curiously, and discovered him, with his face
+turned towards her, observing her intently.  He smiled when he met her
+eyes with their curious questioning look; his own expressed admiration,
+and something more, which he strove to suppress.
+
+"You were quite right," he said.  "It is a wonderful day.  But I wish
+you had not discovered that before you came out here.  I didn't.  It
+seemed to me this morning a rotten sort of day altogether.  I wasn't
+sure even that I should see you before I left.  I have just half an
+hour.  If it wasn't for the thought of seeing you again at the other end
+I should feel pretty sick at leaving.  I've only known you a few days;
+but I seem to have known you for quite a long time.  That's odd, isn't
+it?  I've enjoyed the last of my holiday more than words can express."
+
+He talked quickly, eagerly.  His face was flushed, and a sort of boyish
+shyness showed in his eyes.  She regarded him with an air of faint
+perplexity and said nothing.  His abrupt confidences were disconcerting.
+
+"You won't forget these few days altogether, will you?" he urged.
+
+Her composed face, her air of increasing surprise, damped his ardour
+considerably.  The light died out of his eyes.
+
+"I shan't forget a single day of all the days I spend here," she
+replied, not knowing that she was unkind, not meaning to be.
+
+She was not thinking of Sinclair.  Her appreciation had nothing to do
+with him.  She was reviewing her earlier impressions, feeling again the
+joy which the sense of beauty gives; the complete satisfaction of that
+walk towards the sunrise, and the magic splendour of the morning when
+the world stirred out of slumber, dew-drenched and asparkle in the
+golden radiance of the newly risen sun.  She had realised, as she
+stepped confidently forward in its warmth, the wonder and the goodness
+of being alive.  That sense of well-being remained with her, would
+remain with her when the boy, who looked to her for a response she was
+unable to make, was gone down the mountain road out of her dream.  He
+was no part of the dream: he was merely a transitory figure flitting
+through the gold-blue mist.
+
+"I don't know what it is about the place which grips me so, unless it is
+that it is unlike any place I've ever seen.  I love the brooding silence
+and the warmth and the soft mountain air.  There is health in every
+breath of it.  Down at the Bay the winds rend one.  It's all heat and
+noise and rush."
+
+"Oh! the Bay's not half a bad place," he protested.  "Most people at the
+beginning of a holiday feel as you do; but it wears off.  You will be
+jolly well bored at the end of a fortnight.  Travelling always along one
+old road grows monotonous.  And whichever way you go it's the same old
+road.  You may strike across the veld, but sooner or later you have to
+come back to the road."
+
+"After all,"--she looked at him quickly,--"it isn't monotony that bores
+one really.  We like doing the familiar thing."
+
+"Not necessarily," he returned.  "When it is a case of returning to
+work, the familiar thing becomes a nuisance.  I wish you were driving
+down the mountain with me.  Don't come out to see the start.  I don't
+wish you to make one of the crowd.  I'm going to say good-bye to you
+here.  I am leaving my racquet behind.  I want you to use it, will you?
+I've another at my digs, so you needn't feel you are depriving me.  I
+want you to have it."
+
+"That's very kind of you," she said, touched by this act of generosity,
+and secretly embarrassed.  She could not without ungraciousness refuse,
+but she wished that he had not placed her under this obligation.
+
+"It will serve to pass an hour or two when you weary of the same old
+road," he said, smiling.
+
+He was jealous because she had found a companion for the road; that this
+companion did not play games was a source of satisfaction to him.
+
+"But you break up the set when you leave," she said.
+
+"We played three before you arrived," he reminded her.  "When you get
+back to the Bay I'm coming in sometimes to play with you at the Club
+courts.  You're a member, I suppose?"
+
+She nodded.
+
+"Are you?"
+
+"I am about to become one," he answered, with an amused look at her
+surprised face.  "I've thought of joining often.  You know the
+acquaintance isn't going to end here.  I may see you again?"
+
+He looked at her with great earnestness, and waited with such obvious
+anxiety for her reply that it seemed to her there was only one possible
+answer to his question.  And indeed she was very willing to continue a
+friendship which had been on the whole agreeable.
+
+"I should be sorry if I thought it would be otherwise," she said, with
+kind sincerity.  "It would seem strange not to meet, seeing that we have
+been such good friends."
+
+"Good friends!" he repeated.  "Yes; we have been that...  Well, that's
+the gist of what I wanted to say.  When I travel down the mountain I
+shall remember your words and your sweetness.  We are good friends,
+whose friendship started amid the heights."
+
+He rose from his seat.  She looked up at him with eyes that held a
+wondering interest in their look.  The phrase took hold of her
+imagination.  Until that moment he had always seemed just a boy to her;
+but in that moment she thought of him as a man, with a man's thoughts
+and a man's feelings.  She stood up a little shyly and gave him her
+hand.
+
+"I am sorry you are going away," was all she said.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER TEN.
+
+During the days which followed time sped on amber wings.  It sped so
+swiftly that her fortnight's holiday seemed to Esme the shortest
+fortnight her life had ever known.  Oddly, she did not realise why the
+hours were so mysteriously curtailed.  In reality her days were longer
+than usual; they started at sunrise.
+
+This practice of early rising, which was new to her, developed into a
+daily habit.  If by chance she overslept, as she did occasionally, her
+day was robbed of its chief pleasure--the early morning walk in Hallam's
+company.  He never waited for her.  He never referred to her absence
+when she failed to put in an appearance on the stoep at the time he came
+out, stick in hand, ready for his walk.  But he always looked for her;
+and when he saw her waiting for him he appeared pleased.  They set forth
+together as a matter of course.
+
+He grew to look forward to her companionship.  His manner had lost its
+rough unsociability; he talked to her readily.  Occasionally he left the
+seat, which had come by tacit recognition to be considered especially
+his, for a chair beside hers on the stoep.  His behaviour excited
+considerable surprise and comment among the other guests; but to Esme it
+appeared less remarkable than his former attitude of almost hostile
+aloofness.  She derived a quiet happiness from his society.
+
+As she came to know him better her amazement at his weakness grew
+enormously.  That a man of such striking personality, possessed of
+considerable will-power, should yield himself to the influence of a
+sordid vice, be dominated by it, surprised her beyond words.  It was the
+one thing about him which she hated.  It was ugly and inconsistent and
+degrading.  She never saw him drink; he took nothing but milk and soda
+with his meeds.  In the daytime he always appeared perfectly sober; but
+at night, after dinner, it was his invariable custom to disappear, where
+she did not know; but sometimes she heard his stumbling step going along
+the stoep after every one else was in bed.  She would lie awake and
+listen for these sounds, but it was only occasionally she heard him go
+unsteadily to his room.  Then her heart would beat faster, and the tears
+would come to her eyes, and always, she offered up a prayer for him in
+the quiet darkness of her little room.  Her pity for him and her liking
+grew like a flower, unconscious of its expansion as it opens to the sun.
+
+When first it occurred to Esme to use her influence to wean Hallam from
+his nightly practice was uncertain; doubtless her desire had leaned that
+way from the beginning of their acquaintance; but it was not until she
+was well into the second week of her holiday that she summoned up
+sufficient courage one evening while they sat at dinner to propose that
+he should accompany her for a walk.  It was too beautiful a night to
+spend indoors, she urged.
+
+The man hesitated.  She believed that he was going to refuse.  It was
+easy to see that her suggestion was not acceptable to him.  It took him
+aback, and for quite an appreciable while he did not reply to her.  Then
+he said, somewhat brusquely:
+
+"Have you not had walking enough for one day?"
+
+"Come and sit with me on the stoep," she said, "if you do not care to
+walk."
+
+Some quality in her voice, something, too, in the expression of her
+face, when he turned his face to look at her, arrested his attention.
+He scrutinised her more closely, and into his eyes, as he watched her,
+leapt a light of understanding.
+
+"I never met any one quite so indefatigable as you," he said.  "If you
+really desire exercise, of course I'll accompany you.  There will be a
+moon to-night.  She is young, but she will serve our purpose.  Why do
+you want to walk?"
+
+The question was jerked out abruptly.  There was an inflection of
+curiosity in his tones.  Esme answered quietly, without looking at him.
+
+"I suppose because I feel it is a sin to remain indoors on such a
+night."
+
+Had not her eyes been averted from his face she must have seen his lips
+compress themselves at her words.  A sort of hardness came into his
+voice.
+
+"Your language is somewhat exaggerated," he returned.  "The physical
+benefit is more obvious than the moral, I think.  However, if it gives
+you a sense of righteousness, so much the better.  I will lend myself
+readily to further that end.  What do you usually do in the evenings?"
+
+"Sit on the stoep generally.  I don't care about cards.  When Mr
+Sinclair was here we used to walk."
+
+"Sinclair!--yes...  The fellow who fancied he possessed all the virtues
+because he had not certain vices.  You must miss him."
+
+"That isn't a very kind description," she said.
+
+"I was not trying to be kind," he answered.  "I am not of a kindly
+disposition.  You may observe that I do not lay claim to any of the
+virtues.  It is safe to conclude that what you don't claim will never be
+conceded to you.  These facts once grasped simplify life enormously.
+But I waste time in attempting to teach you worldly wisdom.  You live in
+a world of illusions."
+
+He spoke very little during the remainder of the time he sat at table.
+His manner was preoccupied, and his face looked grim.  Esme felt that he
+regretted having yielded to her request; he resented interference with
+his routine.  When he rose from the table, which he did before any of
+the others, he turned to her and said in his curt way:
+
+"Please be ready in half an hour from now."
+
+Then he pushed his chair back and walked quickly from the room.
+
+The old gentleman on her right asked Esme to make a fourth at bridge.
+He looked disappointed when she declined.  She explained that she was
+going for a walk.
+
+"It is good to be young.  But don't overdo it," he counselled.
+
+"The air is so wonderful; I am never tired up here," she replied.
+
+"I have heard that said of the air in other places," he said, and
+smiled.  "If I were twenty years younger I would go with you."
+
+The old gentleman was not on the stoep to see Esme start on her walk.
+He would have been astonished equally with the rest who viewed her
+departure to see Hallam come out of the house and join her and walk with
+her into the road.  The people on the stoep who witnessed these things,
+wondered, and spoke of their wonder to one another.  No one before had
+seen Hallam in the evenings after he left the dinner table.  No one,
+except this girl, who seemed on terms of easy friendliness with him,
+ever spoke to him.  It is not easy to talk to a man who deliberately
+ignores your existence.  It was plain that he wanted to be left alone:
+yet he made an exception in favour of the girl.  There was only one
+construction likely to be placed on this amazing preference.  And so the
+people at the hotel looked after the disappearing figures, and
+criticised the growing intimacy between the man and girl long after they
+had vanished from sight amid the shadows of the early dusk.
+
+When they were well away from the hotel Hallam took the pipe from his
+mouth and looked down at the girl's unconscious face and smiled dryly.
+He wondered whether she realised that they were objects of curiosity to
+the people they had left behind, whether, if she did realise it, it
+would trouble her at all?  Her eyes, lifted to his in response to his
+steady scrutiny, showed darkly shadowed in the uncertain light; they
+smiled frankly up at him.  He knew while he gazed down at her that he
+would miss her when she had gone, that life would seem emptier, more
+purposeless, than before.  From the first he had realised the danger of
+the acquaintance; yet he had drifted into it with very little effort to
+evade the danger.  He had not made the advances, but he had responded to
+them; and now he was regretting, with a sense of bitter futility, the
+folly of allowing her to become a significant influence in his life.  He
+could not end the thing now; he did not want to; her companionship had
+become necessary to him.
+
+But he could prevent her liking for him from developing, could, if he
+chose, crush it outright.  To crush it outright was perhaps the wiser
+course.
+
+"You know," he said quietly, "those people who watched us away are
+deploring your indiscretion in associating with me.  I am not resenting
+it.  They are perfectly right.  I am not a desirable companion for any
+one.  Why did you first speak to me?  Why do you persist in the
+acquaintance?  I often wonder.  Don't you know what I am?"
+
+"Perhaps I do," she answered in so low a voice that, but for the
+stillness of the night, he would scarce have heard the faltered words.
+"I think that is one reason why I spoke to you."
+
+"You mean," he said, "that you were sorry?  That's kind of you.  But I
+am not conscious of needing sympathy.  What other reason had you?"
+
+"Isn't it only natural to talk to people one meets daily?" she asked.
+"I talk to every one in the hotel."
+
+He smiled.
+
+"I have observed that.  But you don't walk with them.  Why did you
+insist on my coming out to-night?"
+
+"Oh!" she said, and felt her face aflame, and was grateful for the
+darkness which concealed her confusion.  "I cannot give a reason for
+every impulse that moves me.  I wanted to walk."
+
+"Excuse me if I accuse you once more of insincerity," he said.  "It was
+no impulse that prompted you to ask me.  It was a deliberate and
+premeditated request which cost you some effort to make.  Your concern
+for me is very flattering.  But you waste your sympathy.  What do you
+imagine you accomplish by this display of energy?  You will overtire
+yourself, that is all.  For me, it is merely a long time between
+drinks."
+
+Tears came into her eyes.  She hoped he did not see them, but she could
+not have kept them back.  He hurt her even more than he intended to.
+
+"I don't care," she said, a little unsteadily, "how hard you box my
+ears.  I am glad I asked you to come.  I'm glad you came."  She raised
+her face suddenly and lifted defiant eyes to his.
+
+"I am sorry I was insincere.  You got me there.  I didn't know you were
+so observant.  In future I'll be absolutely frank with you.  I'll be
+frank now, even if it angers you.  I asked you to come out because I
+think it is a shame for you to spend your evenings as you do.  I think
+it is a shame that you should waste your life.  I'm not so much sorry
+for you as savage with you.  It's hateful in you.  It's the one thing
+which spoils you from being absolutely fine."
+
+She broke off abruptly, startled at her own vehemence, immensely
+embarrassed, and horrified with herself.  The man was staring at her,
+staring in amazement, incredulous and almost bewildered by the
+surprising rush of words.  He had never in his life been so
+thunderstruck, nor had he ever before listened to such plain speaking.
+He was silent in face of this retort for which he had been in no sense
+prepared.
+
+"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, aghast at her own daring.  "What must you
+think of me?  I never meant to attack you like this.  It's--abominable."
+
+"Whatever I think of you," he answered, "I can never again call you
+insincere.  You have hurled truths at me to-night.  You were quite right
+in everything you said; but--forgive me--you were quite wrong in saying
+them.  However, largely that's my own fault for provoking you.  It was
+inconsiderate to push my inquiries; it would be illogical if I
+complained because you answered them.  We'll wipe the incident out.  At
+least we understand one another.  In future, when I see you making your
+social effort, I shall recognise that you are started on your morality
+campaign."
+
+"Please don't," she said falteringly, with a catch so suggestive of
+repressed emotion in her tones that he repented the ill-nature of his
+words.
+
+He glanced down at her as she walked beside him along the dim road,
+hatless, with the soft hair shading her partly averted face; then he
+straightened his stooping shoulders with a jerk, and looked about him at
+the darkening landscape, and up at the sky, where the young moon rode
+serenely in a star-strewn cloudless sky.  It was a fine night, warm and
+still; the wan moonlight pierced the dusk palely, revealing the road
+cutting like a path of silver across the velvety darkness of the veld.
+
+Some softening quality in the quiet beauty of the night, or it may have
+been in the sight of the partly turned face, with its look of hurt
+distress, penetrated the man's consciousness.  His mood changed; a
+kinder note banished the harshness from his voice.  He had wounded her
+deliberately, and he regretted it.
+
+"I'm a brute," he said in altered tones.  "Don't heed my roughness; it
+is not meant.  I had no wish to offend."
+
+"You did not offend," she answered.  "But I am afraid that I did."
+
+"No," he said, but without conviction, she thought.  "I asked for truth,
+and I got it.  Perhaps that is what surprised me.  The last thing a man
+expects to hear is the truth about himself.  I didn't credit you with
+the possession of so much courage."
+
+"It has all evaporated," she said.
+
+"The courage!" he laughed.  "Oh!  I think not.  It has merely gone under
+for the time."
+
+And then he turned the conversation, and closed the matter, as she felt,
+finally.  She had no means of knowing whether his resentment of her
+plain speaking still rankled.  A sort of constraint had fallen between
+them.  She felt self-conscious, and rather like a child who has been
+rebuked.  But she did not regret having spoken as she had done.  The
+barriers of pretence were down; there existed a clear understanding
+between them.  As she walked rather silently with him in the moonlight
+she resolved that on the morrow she would invite him to accompany her
+again.
+
+Book 1--CHAPTER ELEVEN.
+
+That walk by the ineffectual light of a young moon brought about a
+significant change in the relations between the man and girl.  The last
+reserves were swept away.  The sweeping had been drastic; it left not so
+much as a shadow of doubt in the mind of each in regard to the other.
+They were profoundly interested in one another, with an interest which
+struck deeper than the repugnances which both were conscious existed.
+The girl liked the man and was horrified at his weakness; the man liked
+the girl and resented her interference: their mutual regard was stronger
+than their antagonism.
+
+The people at the hotel watched the development of the friendship
+distrustfully.  They did not approve of the man.  All they knew of him
+was to his discredit.  The general opinion was that it was well the girl
+was leaving so soon.
+
+"You appear to be great friends with Mr Hallam," the old lady who was
+nervous of the mountain road observed one day to Esme.  "What a terrible
+thing it is to see a young man deliberately making wreck of his life.
+Don't you think so?"
+
+"I do," Esme answered gravely.  "One day he will come to think so too;
+and then he will change."
+
+The old lady shook her head.
+
+"I should doubt it very strongly," she said.  She considered it
+regrettable that the girl should cherish hopes of so improbable a
+reform.
+
+"There is nothing that the human will cannot accomplish, when the will
+to accomplish a thing is strong enough," Esme said with quiet
+conviction.
+
+"You think that?"
+
+"I am sure of it."
+
+"Then, why does not Mr Hallam make some effort to overcome his
+failing?"
+
+"I suppose because he has not felt a sufficiently strong incentive.  It
+is difficult to understand these things.  But I cannot help believing he
+will make good."
+
+The old lady was manifestly unconvinced; but Esme's faith remained
+unshaken.  She believed in the eventual triumph of Hallam's better
+nature.  The man was not insensible of her faith in him.  Her influence
+over him was stronger than either of them realised.  Each day he felt
+his interest in her deepening; but it was not until her visit came to
+the finish that he knew exactly what her friendship meant to him.
+
+On the last morning when they sat at breakfast, and the talk turned
+naturally to the journey down the mountain, it came to him with
+unpleasant clearness that he was going to miss her very much.  He saw
+the regret in her eyes at the thought of going away, and he knew that a
+similar regret was in his heart.  They had come to the parting of the
+ways, and neither wished to part.
+
+"Can't you stay a little longer?" he asked her.  But she shook her head
+and answered no.
+
+"I hate these comings and goings," he said gruffly; "they make life
+uncomfortable."
+
+"I loved the coming," she replied softly; "but I hate going.  I have
+been happy here."
+
+"I expect you are happy anywhere," he said.  And she laughed, but she
+did not answer him.  "I shall miss our walks," he added.
+
+"I shall miss them to," she replied.  "I shall miss many things.  One
+day I shall come up here again."
+
+"Will you?"  He looked surprised.  "I shall not do that after I go away.
+To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones.  Each
+point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past."
+
+"But when one's memories are pleasant," she argued, "it is good to
+recall them."
+
+"They come back to us with the dust on them," he insisted.  "It is more
+comfortable to live in the present.  You'll forget the Zuurberg when you
+are back in the town.  You'll be engrossed with other matters.  You'll
+forget."
+
+"Not one hour," she breathed softly.  "I'll forget nothing.  Will you?"
+
+He laughed bitterly.
+
+"Life is not so full of pleasant things that I can afford to bury in
+oblivion the pleasantest that has happened to me," he said.  "When you
+drive down the mountain to-day, I will go with you and see you on your
+way."
+
+If anything could have given her pleasure at leaving it was this resolve
+on Hallam's part to drive with her down the mountain road.  His
+accompanying her gave to the excursion an air of adventure and decreased
+the sense of parting.  It was not, she found when she came to say
+goodbye to the little group of people assembled on the stoep to watch
+the departure of the cart, these general leave-takings which were
+distressing; nor did it concern her to turn her back on the hotel on the
+veld; the real parting was to follow, but for the moment that did not
+weigh with her.  Her holiday was not yet at an end.
+
+There were other passengers for the journey besides themselves.  Hallam
+waited until these had taken their seats in the back; then he helped the
+girl up to the front seat next the driver, and, to the amazement of the
+beholders, got up after her and sat down by her side.  They concluded
+that he was leaving also; it did not occur to any one to suppose that he
+was going to see the girl off by the train and would return that
+evening.  An act of such supererogatory courtesy was not expected of
+him.
+
+The horses started, and the cart swung along with its load of passengers
+and luggage, travelling at a good pace along the hard smooth road.  Esme
+leaned back in her seat and looked about her with happy appreciative
+eyes.  On the upward journey she had longed for a companion to share her
+joy in the scenery.  She recalled her first impressions, as she drove
+now with Hallam beside her.  She had been very tired on that occasion,
+eye and brain both had been weary.  To-day she felt surprisingly well
+and very alert.  The air, the movement, the strong light, all added to
+her sense of enjoyment; and the presence of the man beside her, his
+nearness, his unobtrusive care of her, his interest in all which
+interested her, made the return journey infinitely more wonderful than
+the journey up the mountain had seemed.  She felt extraordinarily happy.
+And yet she was going away.  Soon she and her companion would be
+parted.  It might be that she would never see him after that day.  But
+she could not realise these things.  She felt him beside her, heard his
+voice speaking to her against the mountain wind which blew across them,
+saw the kindness in the keen eyes when he turned his head to look at her
+and mark her appreciation of some beauty along the route; and she knew
+that he mattered to her tremendously; that her feeling for him was a
+real and profoundly significant emotion, something which had sprung to
+life suddenly, which would go on growing in her heart after they had
+separated and gone their different ways.
+
+This was the thing which had happened to her.  She had looked for
+something to happen, but she had not dreamed it would be anything like
+this.
+
+She fell to wondering how she would feel when they came to say good-bye,
+whether she would realise the parting and feel lonely, whether her face
+would betray her regret?  Whether he would see and understand...
+
+The journey down occupied considerably less time than the journey up had
+done; everything seemed to lend itself to speed her departure.  But at
+Coerney there was a wait before the train came in.  Hallam took her to
+the hotel and ordered refreshments, and afterwards they went and sat in
+the shade of the trees and talked away their last minutes together.  She
+felt that she would have liked to prolong that talk indefinitely; and
+the minutes slipped away so fast.
+
+"It was nice of you to come," she said.  "I should be feeling horribly
+lonely now if I had had this wait alone."
+
+"The train's late," he said.  "God bless the lack of unpunctuality.
+I've half a mind to go with you.  I don't know why I don't go.  I don't
+know why I stay on in a God-forsaken hole on the top of a mountain which
+leads nowhere.  Do you?"
+
+She laughed.
+
+"I suppose you like it," she said.  "And the air is fine."
+
+"A man can't live on air."
+
+"But you don't live there," she said.  For the first time it occurred to
+her that she did not know where he lived; she knew surprisingly little
+about him.
+
+"I don't live anywhere; I drift," he said.
+
+He met her eyes and read the curiosity in them, their unspoken
+criticism, and smiled.  But he did not give her any information.  He
+started to talk again on impersonal matters, while she looked away into
+the green tangle of the trees and wondered about him.
+
+On the way to the station he gave her a book, which he took from his
+pocket and handed to her with the remark that it would relieve the
+tedium of the train journey.  She read the title, "David Harum," and
+flushed with pleasure as she thanked him.
+
+"I hope you will like it," he said.  "I have found him a good
+companion."
+
+He discovered an empty compartment and settled her in it and stood by
+the door.  She leaned from the window, with her arms on it, and looked
+down at him, earnestly, intently, with the light of unsaid things
+shining in her eyes.
+
+"I hate going," she said.
+
+"I know.  Partings are beastly things."
+
+But he said nothing to lead her to hope that this parting was not final;
+no intimation of it being otherwise entered his thoughts.
+
+"To-morrow," he said, "I shall go alone to watch the sunrise."
+
+A little wistful smile curved her lips.
+
+"I shall think of you," she said.
+
+"I shall probably have _you_ in my thoughts," he replied, and smiled
+also.  "We have spent some pleasant times together."
+
+She leaned further out and held out a hand to him as the train was about
+to start.  He took it and pressed it warmly.
+
+"Thank you for your kindness to me," she said simply.
+
+"Thank _you_ for your bright companionship," he returned, and the regret
+he felt at parting crept into his voice.
+
+He released her hand and stood back while the train moved slowly out of
+the station.  The girl, leaning from the open window, saw the tall
+stooping figure on the platform, with face turned towards her, until she
+drew back suddenly and sat down in the corner seat, a feeling of great
+loneliness in her heart, and in her eyes the brightness of unshed tears.
+She took up the book he had given her, and opened it, and read on the
+fly-leaf his name, written in small, unsteady characters,--Paul Hallam.
+
+She sat with the book open in her lap, gazing at his name.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER TWELVE.
+
+Esme Lester lived with a married sister at Port Elizabeth in a little
+house in Havelock Street.  Her brother-in-law was junior partner in a
+store which was not a particularly flourishing concern, and the family
+finances were generally at low ebb.  There were two children, a boy and
+a girl, named respectively John and Mary.  When the family were all at
+home the little house seemed full to overflowing.
+
+Esme had a tiny bedroom at the back, overlooking a cemented yard.  There
+was one beauty in this yard, a huge oleander tree, the dark green leaves
+of which and the clusters of sweet-scented pink blossoms reared
+themselves against her window and shaded and perfumed her little room.
+If the oleander had been stricken by drought, or any other mischance had
+befallen it to cause it to die, the house would have been unbearable to
+the girl.  As it was, the oleander made life possible, even when the
+children were troublesome, and when her sister and her husband
+quarrelled.  They quarrelled frequently; over the children, over the
+housekeeping expenses, over the lack of money.  Lack of money was the
+principal grievance.
+
+Esme boarded with them, because it seemed more natural to stay with her
+own people than with strangers, and because her sister liked to have
+her.  But she was not fond of her brother-in-law; and the constant
+disagreements worried her.
+
+It seemed to her, when she entered the house after her pleasant holiday,
+that she had left all the peace and romance behind and returned to the
+drab reality of the common daily round.  Her sister welcomed her with
+restrained pleasure, but the children hung about her in unqualified
+delight, bubbling over in childish fashion with excitement at her
+return.
+
+"You are looking well," her sister remarked.  "I wish I could take a
+holiday.  Single girls don't realise how lucky they are until after they
+are married.  Jim and I spent our honeymoon at the Zuurberg.  I thought
+it dull."
+
+Esme reflected, while she regarded her sister with a puzzled scrutiny,
+that it was scarcely surprising her marriage had proved on the whole a
+disappointing affair.  To feel dull on one's honeymoon is not a
+promising beginning.
+
+"I thought it wonderful," she said.
+
+"You had a good time, I suppose.  Were there many people there?"
+
+"A fair number.  But it's the place itself.  It is lovely."
+
+Mrs Bainbridge looked unconvinced.
+
+"People, not places, make a holiday enjoyable," she said with a certain
+worldly wisdom which jarred on her hearer.  "Were there any men there?"
+
+"A few--yes."
+
+Her sister laughed.
+
+"You always get on with men," she said.  "I wonder you don't marry."
+
+"But, according to your view, that would be a mistake."
+
+"Not if the man were well off.  It is having to cheese-pare that makes
+the shoe pinch.  Marriage has its compensations."  Her gaze rested
+reflectively on the children.  "One grumbles," she said; "but one
+wouldn't undo all of it."
+
+"_I'm_ never going to marry," John, aged eight, announced with sturdy
+determination.  "I've seen too much of it."
+
+His mother laughed, and Esme caught him up and kissed him.
+
+"That's for you, you stony-hearted little misogynist," she said, as he
+struggled to elude her embrace.
+
+"John's a silly kid," Mary, his senior by two years, announced in the
+crushing tones of a person who resents a slight to her sex.
+
+John freed himself from his aunt's detaining hold in order to vindicate
+his insulted manhood; and Esme left them to their scuffling and went
+upstairs to unpack.
+
+When she came down again her brother-in-law had come home.  He sat by
+the window smoking his pipe, but he rose when she entered and came
+forward and kissed her.  He was a heavily-built, good-looking man, with
+a boisterous geniality of manner which worried his sister-in-law.
+Oddly, he never realised her objection.  He liked her and laboured under
+the delusion that she reciprocated his affection.  He kissed her
+heartily.
+
+"Glad to see you back, old girl," he said, and reseated himself in the
+only comfortable chair in the room and resumed his pipe.  "You look very
+fit.  I told Rose the Zuurberg would set you up; but she won't hear a
+good word for it.  There isn't much to do up there, certainly, but loaf
+around.  The drive up, though, is all right.  Pretty--isn't it?"
+
+She laughed, to his puzzled surprise.  She often surprised him by the
+way in which she received his remarks.  He had said nothing to cause her
+merriment.  But he preferred smiling faces to glum looks, and so he did
+not resent it when she laughed at nothing.
+
+"I suppose loafing around was what I needed," she said, steering clear
+of a discussion on the scenery.  "Living in the open air with nothing to
+do is a fine tonic."
+
+"Yes," he agreed.  "I'd like a little of that myself.  A man who spends
+all his days in an office ought to get away now and again; but when it
+comes to carting a wife and kids around with one it makes an expensive
+business of it.  Rose ought to see that a man needs change from his
+work."
+
+"We are most of us short-sighted where the needs of other people are
+concerned," she returned with an ambiguity which he did not suspect.  "I
+suppose it would be rather nice if I remembered that Rose hasn't had a
+holiday and went out to help her with the preparations for your evening
+meal."
+
+"Rot!" he ejaculated, unperceiving the drift of her reflections.  "You
+finish out your holiday and sit down and talk to me."
+
+But she elected to go in quest of her sister, who was busy in the
+kitchen, aided by an incompetent Kaffir girl of an amiable disposition,
+which revealed itself in the broad smile she gave the young missis when
+she appeared in the bright, hot little kitchen, which looked out, as her
+bed room looked out, on the white yard shaded by the big oleander tree
+beneath which the children played happily in their cramped but secure
+playground.
+
+It was a homelike, pleasant enough picture; but the girl's thoughts
+strayed persistently to the green open spaces, and the pleasant ease of
+the life she had left behind her.  She felt a new dissatisfaction with
+her present surroundings.
+
+"Can I help?" she asked.
+
+Her sister turned round from the stove with flushed preoccupied face to
+stare at her.
+
+"In that dress!  Goodness! no.  Besides, it's all ready--or ought to be.
+But Maggie won't keep a good fire."
+
+Maggie promptly came forward and fed the voracious little stove with a
+fresh supply of logs.
+
+"This stove eat wood.  Missis should see.  I put plenty logs on."
+
+"She's right, you know," Rose said, stepping back, and pushing the hair
+from her face.  "Jim ought to buy a new stove.  He'd save money on it in
+the long run.  But he hasn't the cooking to do; he merely grumbles when
+he has to order the wood.  Is the table laid, Maggie?  Then you can
+begin to dish up."
+
+She put a hand through her sister's arm and drew her out to the
+doorstep, where they stood watching the children, both a little silent
+and thoughtful in mood.
+
+"Aren't you hating it, being back again?"  Rose asked presently, and
+bent a keen look on her young sister's face.  Esme looked up to smile.
+
+"I suppose one always feels a little regretful at the finish of a
+holiday," she said.  "But of course I don't hate being back."
+
+Rose did not press the point.  Something in the girl's manner, something
+even in the reticence she betrayed in speaking of her holiday, puzzled
+her.  Esme was usually more expansive.  She did not seem to wish to talk
+of her experiences.  Perhaps, after all, she had had a disappointing
+time.  But the rest and the change had given her back her strength.  Had
+it?  Rose looked at her again more attentively.  She appeared to be in
+excellent health; but she had lost her old gaiety; she seemed depressed.
+
+"You are tired after the journey," she said.  "Come on in and have
+something to eat."
+
+She called the children away from their play; and they all went into the
+little dining-room and sat, crowded uncomfortably, round the small
+table.
+
+Jim served the food, and was jocular and determinedly cheerful.  He was
+pleased to have his sister-in-law home again.  It was all rather noisy
+and uncomfortable.  The girl's thoughts strayed to the long shady room
+at the Zuurberg, and to the silent companionship of the man whose
+presence she was missing more than she would have thought possible.  And
+it was only a few hours since they had parted.  There would follow many
+hours, many days, many weeks.  She wondered whether she would miss him
+less as the days went by, or if this intolerable loneliness would grow.
+It was distressing to think that she might never see him again.  She
+wondered also whether he missed her.  She hoped he did.  And then she
+fell to picturing him reverting perhaps to the old evening practice of
+drinking steadily, until finally he stumbled along the stoep on his way
+to bed...  Surely not that!  If her friendship counted for anything at
+all in his life its influence would linger with him and have some
+deterrent effect.
+
+"Sling along the Adam's ale, old girl," said Jim at this point in her
+reverie.  It was one of his boasts that he didn't pour his money down
+his throat.
+
+Esme passed him the water-bottle and roused herself with an effort and
+joined in the general talk.  The meal seemed interminable.  The children
+were excited and noisy; they dawdled over their food.  Their mother
+urged them to be quicker, and their father defeated her authority by
+insisting that the slower they ate the better for their digestions.
+Husband and wife had a wordy argument on this point.  The children
+ceased eating to listen, on perceiving which their father vented his
+annoyance on them and sent them away from the table.
+
+"That's your fault," he said to his wife.  "You are always nagging at
+the kids.  We never get a meal in peace."
+
+Esme listened and wondered.  What was wrong with this household?  These
+two were quite fond of each other, and fond of the children; yet they
+were seldom in agreement on any subject.  She wondered whether all
+married people got on one another's nerves.  Marriage was a difficult
+problem.  It occurred to Esme that the solution of the difficulty might
+be reached by it generous use of tact.  Without her volition her
+reflections found verbal expression.
+
+"Tact!" she observed aloud to the astonishment of her hearers.  "That's
+the secret of happiness--immense tact.  Jim, I think you are the most
+tactless person in the world."
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
+
+During the first few days after her return to her sister's home time
+hung dismally for Esme.  It would have been better had she gone back to
+work immediately; but there was a full week to term time, and during
+that week she found nothing sufficiently interesting to distract her
+thoughts from the desolating fact that she missed something out of her
+life.  Her world was like a world without sunshine, flat and colourless,
+a place of neutral tints and drab impressions.  She hated the house, she
+hated going out; most of all, she hated the people who visited her
+sister and gossiped over tea of every trivial matter in the common daily
+round.  Those afternoon gatherings gave her mental indigestion.  Yet at
+one time these things had seemed pleasant and natural.  The inference
+was that there was something wrong with herself.
+
+Her sister laid a hand on her secret very soon after her return.  She
+had gone into Esme's room and taken up a book, which lay on the little
+table beside her bed, and opened it casually.
+
+"Who is Paul Hallam?" she asked, reading the name inside the cover.
+
+Esme swung round from the dressing-table, saw the book in her sister's
+hand, and coloured warmly.
+
+"A man who was staying at the Zuurberg."
+
+"And he gave you this book?"
+
+"Yes--to read in the train."
+
+The two sisters looked at one another.  Rose waited for further
+information, but it was not forthcoming.  She laid the book down, and
+Esme resumed brushing her hair.  It was pretty hair, soft and wavy.  The
+older woman watched operations for a moment or so, then she went
+forward, took the brush from the girl's hand, and brushed it for her.
+
+"Tell me about him," she urged.
+
+"There is nothing to tell," Esme replied.  "He was nice to me while I
+was there; that is all."
+
+The finality of the phrase struck on her own ears desolately.  That was
+all.  Her romance had begun and ended with her holiday.
+
+Rose made no comment.  The scrappy information had illumined things for
+her surprisingly.  She felt suddenly very tender towards her sister.
+She put the hair back from her face and kissed her gently.
+
+"You are just sweet.  You look such a child with your hair like that,"
+she said.
+
+But she made no further mention of Paul Hallam.  There were a dozen
+questions she would have liked to ask, but she forbore.  It was not fair
+to attempt to force the girl's confidence; her very reluctance to speak
+of this acquaintance proved that there was more in it than she allowed,
+perhaps more than she yet realised.
+
+There followed days of restlessness and alternating moods more fitful
+than any barometer.  Sinclair called, and made himself so agreeable to
+Rose and the children, and was so markedly attentive to Esme that Rose
+found herself wishing that this quite eligible and agreeable young man
+was the object of her sister's interest, as he unmistakably desired to
+be.
+
+Esme was pleased to see him again; but her manner towards him showed no
+particular partiality.  It was certainly not George Sinclair, Rose
+decided, who was responsible for the change in the girl.
+
+Sinclair called frequently after that first visit, and speedily became
+on very friendly terms with the family.  He found a staunch ally in
+Rose, who, considering the other affair too remote to be serious, saw in
+Sinclair an eventual safety-valve for her sister's repressed emotions.
+Repressed emotion was undesirable; it hid like a morbid germ in the
+brain cells and worked with insidious effect upon the mind.  In Esme it
+betrayed itself in unexpected bursts of irritability, as her discontent
+with things grew.  Mainly this was the result of reaction, and was but a
+phase in the cure of which Sinclair aided unconsciously.  His visits
+made a break in the general monotony.
+
+And then one day a letter came for Esme.  Rose took it in.  It was
+directed in the same small untidy handwriting which she remembered
+vividly seeing on the front page of the book in Esme's room.  She had
+looked for that book often since but she had never seen it again.  Now,
+with the letter in her hand, her thoughts went back to that little scene
+in the bedroom, and her brows knitted themselves in a frown.  Paul
+Hallam had broken the silence and written to the girl.  She carried the
+letter up to Esme's room and laid it on the table beside her bed.
+
+"Poor George!" she reflected.  "This puts him out of the picture
+anyway."
+
+Then she went downstairs and left it to the girl to make her own
+discovery on her return.
+
+The first thing which Esme's eyes rested on when she ran up to her room
+on getting back from the college where she gave music lessons was the
+letter lying on her table.  She stood for a full minute looking down at
+it with pleased, amazed eyes and a deepening colour in her cheeks; then
+she reached forth shyly and took it up.
+
+"I wonder how he learned my address?" was the thought in her mind.
+
+She had not seen him copy it from the label on her suit-case.  He had
+taken that precaution when the luggage was being placed in the cart.
+
+She seated herself on the side of the bed and opened her letter and read
+it.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+"Dear little Friend," it began characteristically,--
+
+"I wonder whether it will surprise you that I should write to you?  I
+write to ask you a favour.  I want you out of the kindness of your heart
+to send me a line sometimes.  You can in this matter help me
+considerably.  I knew before you left that I should miss you, but I did
+not realise how great that miss would be until after you were gone.
+Never in all my life have I known what it was to feel intolerably lonely
+until now.  It is not fair to me if, after giving me your friendship,
+you withdraw it again altogether.
+
+"I am fighting the devil within me, and just at present I can't say who
+will win.  But you can help me, if you will.  Once you told me it was a
+shame to make waste of my life.  You were right, and I knew it, though
+at the time I resented your candour.  Since you left I have thought
+often of your words.  I miss you.  And I want to talk to you.  I have
+never before ached to talk with any one.  And yet I don't want to see
+you for the present.  If ever we meet you will know I have won.  I
+shan't attempt to see you otherwise.
+
+"Please send me a line occasionally.  You don't know what it will mean
+to me.  I am wondering as I write what you are doing, and whether you
+continue the early morning habit?  The sunrises are not marvellous any
+longer.  Every morning I go in search of the old beauty, but it is not
+there.  I wonder whether I shall ever find it again.
+
+"Paul Hallam."
+
+Esme read this letter through with deepening interest and a growing
+softness in her eyes; there were tears in her eyes; they splashed on to
+the paper and blurred the signature, tears of relief, of deep
+thankfulness that at last the man had come to see the pity of wasting
+his days.
+
+She felt no fear for him any longer.  Not a doubt of him troubled her
+mind.  That he would ultimately win through was assured by the sincerity
+of his desire to win.  It did not seem to her possible that he could
+fail in what he undertook to accomplish.  His devil stood no chance when
+his better self took up arms against him.  He would win.  Assuredly he
+would win.  And then...
+
+The bell sounded for lunch.  She folded the letter and put it inside her
+blouse.  Then she bathed her eyes to hide the traces of emotion and went
+downstairs.
+
+Her sister scrutinised her attentively, but could read nothing in her
+face to help her to any conclusion.  She longed to ask questions, but
+restrained her curiosity in the hope that Esme would confide in her when
+a propitious moment offered.  She made opportunities somewhat too
+obviously, but Esme did not take advantage of them.  She did not speak
+of her letter.
+
+The letters came regularly after that, once a week; and Rose's
+unsatisfied curiosity grew enormously.  There was something unnatural in
+the girl's reticence.  She began to entertain doubts of Paul Hallam.  It
+entered her mind to seek information from Sinclair, but loyalty to her
+sister restrained her from doing that.  Esme, she supposed, answered
+these weekly epistles; but she never saw her write letters; whatever she
+wrote she posted herself.
+
+"Who's Esme's correspondent?"  Jim asked on one occasion when the weekly
+letter attracted his notice.  "These letters are always coming to the
+house."
+
+"I don't know," his wife answered.  "And you'd better not ask her."
+
+"D'you mean she never tells you?" he asked, amazed.
+
+"She doesn't tell me anything.  But I believe they come from a man she
+met at the Zuurberg."
+
+"That place seems to be a kind of matrimonial agency," Jim grinned.  "I
+thought Sinclair was coming into the family.  You see if you can't find
+out something about this fellow.  Sinclair's all right, and he means
+business.  Pity if this is going to queer his pitch."
+
+"It's Esme's affair," Rose replied, experiencing a distinct
+disinclination to follow his counsel.  "When there is anything for me to
+know I expect she will tell me."
+
+"I never knew before that you were so blooming discreet," he rejoined;
+and turned, red in the face but unabashed, to confront his
+sister-in-law, who entered by the open door and met them in the tiny
+hall.  He gave her the letter.
+
+"I was just asking Rose who your correspondent was," he said, with
+overdone ease of manner.  "She pretends she doesn't know."
+
+"She does not know," Esme answered coolly, and took the letter from his
+hand and glanced at it casually.
+
+"Well, but, see here," he returned, nettled but intent on information.
+"We are interested--naturally."
+
+"How can you be interested in some one you have never met?" she said,
+and went on up the steep narrow stairs, carrying her letter with her.
+
+"I'm blowed!" her brother-in-law ejaculated.
+
+Rose laughed annoyingly.
+
+"You made a hash of that," she said.  "She won't say anything now."
+
+"Then let her keep her mouth shut," he said rudely, and went into the
+sitting-room in a ruffled state of mind.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
+
+The receipt of those weekly letters and the pleasurable occupation of
+replying to them engrossed Esme's thoughts, changed all her outlook,
+filled her life completely.  She was falling very deeply in love.  And
+she believed that Paul Hallam loved her.  He did not tell her so in
+words, but every letter which came from him conveyed the idea that it
+was for her sake entirely he was attempting what no other influence
+would have led him to attempt, that when he was sure of himself he would
+come to her.  She waited and hoped and hugged her secret to herself,
+determined to guard from others the knowledge of his weakness, which he
+was so earnestly endeavouring to conquer.
+
+He had left the Zuurberg for the coast, and was staying at Camp's Bay,
+right on the beach, he explained, in writing her a description of his
+new quarters.
+
+"You would love it here," he wrote.  "The road between Camp's Bay and
+Seapoint surpasses everything for beauty.  You've no idea how fine it is
+in the early morning."
+
+In another letter he said: "The moonlight on the sea has set me thinking
+of you.  If only we were watching it together!  The surface of the sea
+is all splashed with silver, broken up and spread over it in a running
+liquid fire.  One day I hope you will watch it with me.  I see it from
+the window as I write."
+
+She treasured these letters and tied them about and locked them away
+from sight.  They brought him very near to her; and his detailed
+descriptions of his walks, his surroundings, helped her to visualise
+him.  She longed to see him again; but she never allowed a breath of her
+longing to find expression in the cheery letters she wrote in answer to
+his.
+
+In the meantime Sinclair pursued his courtship in blissful
+unconsciousness of the hopelessness of his cause.  Esme had come to
+accept Sinclair's friendship as a matter of course.  Their relations
+were very fraternal.  They called one another by their christian names.
+Sinclair was George to everyone in the Bainbridge household, down to the
+children, who viewed him with affectionate interest as a person who
+understood small people's tastes in the matter of sweets.
+
+Every Saturday he came in for tennis, and returned with Esme to the
+house in Havelock Street for supper.  Usually on Sundays he took Esme
+and the children to Red House, and they spent the day on the river.  He
+brightened life for her considerably.  She liked him.  In a friendly,
+wholly unsentimental fashion she was fond of him.  Had there been no one
+else in her life her affection would probably have developed into a
+warmer sentiment.  But she never thought of George Sinclair in the light
+of a possible lover.  He never made love to her.  Not once in their
+pleasant intercourse had he said anything she could have construed into
+an attempt at love-making.  His manner was affectionate and kind always.
+He was a good chum.  That was how she thought of him, as a good chum.
+The awakening therefore was all the more startling when it came.
+
+Sinclair seized his opportunity during the tennis tournament.  With
+considerable difficulty he persuaded her to partner him in the mixed
+doubles.  She was reluctant on account of being a weak player; but he
+overruled her objections, and she gave way.
+
+"You'll lose--with me," she warned him.  "I'm not good at games ever."
+
+"I'll take my chance of that," he replied.  "Anyway, I'd rather lose
+with you than win with any one else."
+
+Esme practised untiringly before the event.  She had never attended the
+tournament before other than as a spectator, and the sight of the crowds
+which gathered each day to view the events shook her nerve.  She played
+badly, and felt rather aggrieved that her partner managed to drag her
+victoriously through their first set.  After their game she sat with him
+below the stand and reproached him for winning.
+
+"It would be all over now if you hadn't cribbed half my balls," she
+complained.
+
+"But you don't want to be out of it really?" he said, surprised.
+
+"I do--and I don't.  It makes me jumpy."
+
+"That's all right.  You'll get your tail up later.  I'm going to win,
+you know.  I'm going to pull this off."
+
+"You've got your work cut out," she said, and laughed.  "You'll get very
+little help from me."
+
+"I only ask your co-operation," he returned confidently.  "Take what you
+can, and leave the rest to me.  I'm out to win.  You see, we are coming
+through together."
+
+She did see.  And with each set they played and won her astonishment
+deepened.  She had always known that he was a good player, but she had
+not realised the reserve force which he could bring into his game when
+he wanted it.  It was something more than play, she decided, which
+carried him through; it was sheer determination not to be beaten.  They
+came through the finals with a hard-won victory.
+
+Jim and Rose were present to watch the finish.  According to Jim, his
+sister-in-law played a footling game.
+
+"At least she didn't hamper her partner," Rose said.
+
+"Hamper him!  No.  She might as well have been off the court
+altogether."
+
+"Her service is good," Rose insisted.
+
+"Yes--for a girl."  He chuckled.  "She leaves him to make all the
+running."
+
+"Well, they won anyhow."
+
+"_He_ won," he corrected.  "Shouldn't be surprised if he didn't win all
+along the line.  He has only a bundle of letters to compete against.  My
+money is on the man on the spot all the time."
+
+"Hush!"  Rose said warningly.  "Here they come."
+
+She hailed the winners with smiling congratulations, and complimented
+Sinclair on his play.
+
+"We pulled it off all right, Mrs Bainbridge," he said, laughing,
+looking hot and young and immeasurably contented with life.  "Esme
+funked right to the finish, but she played up like a good 'un.  Whew!
+I'm hot.  Come on, partner; let's go and have a lemon squash."
+
+The girl, flushed and tired and less elated with success than he was,
+followed him to the back of the pavilion, and stood drinking lemonade,
+and talking to a little knot of competitors who were there for a similar
+purpose.  Some of the players she knew, but a number of them were
+visitors down for the tournament.  A dance that night at the Town Hall
+was to celebrate the finish of the festivities.  A group of flannel-clad
+young men and white-frocked young women were discussing the ball and
+booking dances in advance.  Some one came up to Esme and asked her for a
+dance, which she promised willingly.  In a very short while she had
+given a number of dances away.  Sinclair touched her arm.
+
+"I want some," he said.  "I want quite a lot."
+
+His tone was urgent, and when she turned to look at him she saw that his
+face was strained and very determined.  The expression in his eyes
+puzzled her.
+
+"Of course," she said, "I should feel a little hurt if you didn't."
+
+"Look here!" he said in an undertone.  "Come out of this.  I don't want
+you to give away any more--not at present.  I'm going to have the supper
+dance, and everything after that.  Is it a promise?"
+
+"Well," she said, and looked somewhat doubtful.  "That means that you
+are booked for the entire half of my programme."
+
+He nodded.
+
+"That's it," he said.
+
+"But,"--she was beginning, when he took hold of her arm and led her
+outside, with a muttered reference to the stifling heat.
+
+"Come and sit under the trees," he said.  "I want to watch the set on
+the far court."
+
+It was one of the less interesting sets, and there were fewer
+spectators, which was probably why he decided for it.  He conducted her
+to an unoccupied seat and sat down beside her.
+
+"It's jolly here and cool and out of the crush.  You don't want to watch
+the Johannesburg chap, do you?"
+
+She would have preferred to watch the play on the centre court.  It was
+clear that the Johannesburg man would carry off the championship in the
+men's singles; but she gave in to his wish and decided to remain where
+she was.
+
+Sinclair's manner was nervous and preoccupied; but the girl did not
+appear to notice it; she did not want to talk.  Her companion smoked
+cigarettes and stared with a sort of strained attention at the game and
+jerked out an occasional comment.  Presently he remarked apropos of
+nothing:
+
+"I had a rise yesterday.  That was an altogether unexpected stroke of
+luck."
+
+"Yes!" she exclaimed, turning an interested, unsuspicious face towards
+him.  "I am pleased.  Why didn't you tell me before?"
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Too absorbed in our game," he said, "to think of it.  But I'm thinking
+of it now.  It makes a difference."
+
+"I suppose it does.  You'll be bursting forth into extravagances.  Why
+don't you keep a car?"
+
+"Not yet," he said.  "I want other things more urgently than that."
+
+"What things?"
+
+"I'll tell you to-night," he said, reddening.
+
+"Yes," she said, her thoughts reverting to the discussion in the
+pavilion.  "During half a programme you'll find time enough to tell me a
+good deal."
+
+He glanced at her quickly.
+
+"You didn't mind?" he said.  "It's only the second half; and you'll be
+tired.  You won't want to dance much."
+
+"Oh, indeed!  Then what do you propose we shall do?  If we don't dance
+we might as well remain at home."
+
+"We'll dance all you want to," he replied.  "And we'll go for a stroll
+along the sea wall.  The weather is too hot for being inside.  You shall
+do what you like anyhow."
+
+"You are always so amenable, George," she said, smiling.  "And you
+always get your own way in the end."
+
+He smiled back at her with gay confidence.
+
+"My luck's in," he replied.  "The gods smile on me.  I told you, Esme,
+that I meant to win."
+
+"I did my utmost to prevent you," she said.
+
+"You understand co-operation, partner," he returned coolly.  "That's
+good enough for me."
+
+She did not in the least understand the drift of his remarks, although
+he believed he was tactfully preparing her for the declaration he
+intended making that night.  The last thing she anticipated was the
+proposal which hovered continually in the forefront of Sinclair's mind.
+He intended to put his luck to the test that evening, and felt fairly
+confident as to the result.  He had not the remotest suspicion of
+possessing a rival.  The road ahead, so far as he could see, was
+perfectly clear.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER FIFTEEN.
+
+It seemed to Sinclair that all the conditions that night favoured his
+suit.  It was a perfect evening, warm and still, with a brilliant moon
+in a cloudless sky lighting the world with a luminous whiteness in which
+everything was revealed scarcely less clearly than in the daylight.  It
+was a night for lovers, for the open air and solitude; it was not a
+night for dancing.  Sinclair, after the first dance, which he had with
+Esme, was content to remain on the outskirts of the crowd and look on at
+the rest.  The floor was thronged with dancers.  The lights, the music,
+the colour of the moving crowd, appealed pleasantly to the senses.  He
+liked to watch; and every now and again he caught Esme's eye and won a
+smile from her which cheered him.  She appeared more than usually sweet
+and kind that night, he thought.
+
+The supper dance gave him the right to claim her again.  In the interim
+he had done a lot of thinking.  He had his phrases turned and clear in
+his mind.  He knew very definitely what he wanted to say; he had
+rehearsed it in his thoughts endless times.  And he knew the right
+atmosphere for the deliverance of those neatly turned sentences.  He
+wasn't going to fling the thing at her in a crowded room with numberless
+people present.  They would slip away together in the moonlight, and
+stroll along the sea wall, against which the tiny waves broke softly,
+running in and curling round the rocks, slapping musically against the
+stonework which checked their further advance.  He could tell her to the
+accompaniment of the sea what he could not tell her in a hot and crowded
+place.  He wanted her to himself, away from these others.
+
+It was not a difficult matter to persuade her to go with him.  With the
+finish of supper they left the hall together, crossed the moonlit
+square, passed the Customs House, and so on to the sea wall, where the
+quiet of the night was undisturbed; the swish of lapping water and the
+low murmur of the sea were the only audible sounds in the surrounding
+stillness.
+
+He sat down beside her on a seat cut into the wall, and remained very
+still, holding her hand and looking away to where the ships rode at
+anchor far out on the silver sea.  All the things which he had meant to
+say to her, all his carefully planned sentences, eluded him; he felt
+intensely, horribly nervous as he sat there in the growing silence,
+holding her hand and looking out across the sea.
+
+The girl sat and looked at the water also and forgot the man beside her.
+Her thoughts were away from her present surroundings.  She was thinking
+of a sentence in one of Hallam's letters, while she sat silent in the
+moonlight and saw the surface of the sea, as he had seen it from his
+window while he wrote his letter to her, splashed with silver, broken up
+and spread over it, a running liquid fire.  It was here just as he had
+described it--the same sea, the same moon,--with the waste of waters
+intervening, dividing them in everything but thought.  Sinclair had made
+a mistake in taking her down to the sea.
+
+"Esme!" he said presently, breaking the dragging silence, and pressing
+her hand warmly in his strong grasp.  "Esme!"
+
+She turned her face to his, wholly unaware of the emotional stress under
+which he laboured, but conscious of a quality in his voice which
+rendered it unfamiliar.  She saw his face close to hers, strained and
+white in the moonlight, heard his breathing, hard and deep, like the
+breathing of a man after violent exercise, and felt a faint surprise.
+Dimly she began to realise that something unusual was happening; a look
+of apprehension grew in her eyes.
+
+He groped about after the sentences he had so carefully prepared, but
+his mind was a blank.  He could think of nothing effective to say; and
+all the while her eyes, puzzled and questioning, were on his face.
+
+"I love you," he mumbled presently, and took heart of grace when the
+words were out and pulled her swiftly to him and kissed her.  "Dear, I
+love you with all my soul.  I want to marry you."
+
+Very gently she freed herself from his hold, and drew back, and sat
+scrutinising him with ever growing distress.  She liked him so well.
+She hated having to hurt him; but it had never occurred to her that he
+was in love with her.  His affection had seemed so frankly friendly
+hitherto.
+
+"George, I'm sorry," she said.  "I didn't know.  I don't feel towards
+you like that."
+
+"Perhaps not now.  But you will," he suggested.  "I've been a little
+abrupt.  I ought to have waited."
+
+"It wouldn't have made any difference," she said.
+
+"Are you sure?"
+
+"Quite sure.  I'm very fond of you; but that's all," she added
+convincingly.
+
+"Well, look here!  I'm not taking `No' right off like that.  I'm going
+to wait--"
+
+"No," she interrupted quickly.  "You mustn't think that.  I shan't
+change."
+
+His face fell.
+
+"You don't mean that there is some one else?" he asked.
+
+For a moment or two she did not answer; then she nodded, without
+speaking, and put out a hand and touched his arm.
+
+"My dear," she said, "don't ask me questions.  It is quite possible that
+I shall never marry the man I love, but I cannot marry any one else.
+I'm sorry.  I didn't think you cared for me like that.  I wish you
+didn't.  You must put me out of your thoughts."
+
+He smiled faintly.
+
+"That's not easily done," he replied.  "Besides, I don't want to.  Like
+you, I may never marry the girl I love, but at least I cannot love any
+one else.  You are the one and only girl for me.  I know.  I'm not a
+moonstruck boy.  You'll let me keep your friendship, won't you?  I won't
+take advantage of it."
+
+Tears came into her eyes.  She had never liked him so much as in that
+moment.  The idea of giving up his friendship had not occurred to her
+until he begged the privilege of retaining it.  She did not want to give
+it up.  It was one of the pleasant things in her life.
+
+"I want to continue being friends," she said.  "I've grown to look on
+you as a chum.  That's how I've always thought of you.  I want to be
+friends--and to put this other thing out of my thoughts."
+
+"Yes," he agreed.  "We'll wipe that out.  I made a mistake.  You know,
+dear,"--he felt for her hand and found it and held it tightly,--"I think
+you are the sweetest girl in the world.  I'll do anything for you.  For
+the present I'm feeling a bit sore, and just for a little while will
+keep in the background.  When I turn up again I'll be over the worst of
+it, and you needn't fear that I shall make a fool of myself.  We'll take
+things up where we dropped them."
+
+His defeat staggered Sinclair.  He had been so sure that his luck was
+in, so confident of the girl's affection, and unsuspicious of a possible
+rival.  He knew of no one with whom she was on terms of particular
+intimacy.  It never entered his thoughts to associate Hallam with her in
+any way.  He had not seen the development of that acquaintance.  He
+would have disapproved if he had.  His naturally healthy mind held only
+contempt for such weakness as Hallam's.  He had summed up the man
+briefly as a waster, and so disposed of him.  That the man he despised
+would one day have to be reckoned with, that he stood already in his
+life, a menace to his happiness, an adverse influence, he was wholly
+unaware.  It was as well for his peace of mind that he remained in
+ignorance for long after she had refused him of his rival's identity.  A
+rival who did not materialise left room for a tiny gleam of hope in his
+heart.
+
+"We'd better get back," he said, and rose from the seat.  The beauty of
+the night held no longer any attraction for him.
+
+"I want to go home," she said, rising also.  "I'm tired, and--I want to
+go home."
+
+He took her back to the hall and waited while she fetched her cloak.
+She came out after a brief while, white faced and pensive, with a look
+in her eyes as though she had been crying and had dashed the tears
+hastily away.
+
+He drew her hand through his arm and went with her out into the warm,
+still night, along the deserted streets, up White's Road, traversing the
+intervening byways to her own road almost in silence.  At her door he
+said good-night, and was turning away when she stopped him.  Her heart
+ached with pity for the sadness in his eyes.
+
+"George, I'm sorry," she whispered, and tugged at his sleeve.
+
+"That's all right," he answered, breaking away from her.
+
+His voice sounded husky and a little gruff; he could not trust himself
+to say more.  She drew back, feeling troubled and inadequate, and stood
+on the doorstep looking after him wistfully while he hurried down the
+road in the moonlight, turned a corner and went out of her sight.  She
+had an impulse to run after him: she felt that she must say something,
+do something, anything, to drive the pain and disappointment from his
+look; it hurt her to let him go like that.  But on reflection she knew
+that she could do nothing; she must let him go.
+
+She opened the door and went dejectedly inside and shut it quickly and
+turned the key in the lock.  Softly she crept upstairs to her room.  The
+blind was not drawn and the moonlight streamed in through the open
+window and made any other illumination unnecessary.
+
+She seated herself on the side of the bed and stared out at the black
+shadow of the tree with its clusters of blossoms showing palely in the
+white light.  The household she supposed was asleep; everything was very
+still and quiet.  In the distance a dog barked incessantly: there was no
+other sound to disturb the quiet of the night.
+
+And then suddenly her door opened softly, and Rose came in in her
+nightdress, and stood looking in sleepy surprise at the motionless
+figure seated on the bed.  She advanced to the bed and sat down beside
+the girl and started a whispered conversation.
+
+"I heard you come in," she said.  "Jim's asleep.  Have you had a good
+time?  Why don't you get to bed?"
+
+"I forgot," Esme said, and began to unfasten her dress.  Rose became
+actively helpful.
+
+"You are tired," she said.  "What's the matter, dear?"  She took the
+girl's face between her hands and scrutinised it closely.  "Esme, what
+has happened?  I wish you'd confide in me more."
+
+The gentle reproach in her sister's voice, acting on her overwrought
+nerves, caused the tears, so near the surface, to overflow.  She dropped
+her face on to Rose's shoulder and wept softly.
+
+"Did George say anything to you to-night?"  Rose asked, feeling
+increasingly surprised.  She had not wept when Jim proposed to her.  She
+remembered quite vividly that she had felt elated and very excited.  She
+had wanted to speak of it, to tell people.  She could not fathom Esme's
+mood.
+
+"Is that the trouble, little goose?" she asked.  "I knew--we all knew--
+he meant to propose."
+
+Whereupon Esme lifted her face and turned her tear-wet eyes on the
+speaker in wide amaze.
+
+"You knew!" she said.  "Well, I didn't.  I wish I had known.  I thought
+he was just a pal."
+
+"A pal makes a good husband," Rose said thoughtfully, with the first
+glimmer of doubt in her mind as to what answer her sister had returned.
+"It's all right, isn't it?"
+
+"It's all wrong," Esme answered ruefully, and dabbed at her eyes,--"just
+as wrong as it can be.  He's hurt; and I hate hurting him.  I like him
+so well.  But I don't love him, Rose."
+
+"You don't mean that you refused him?"
+
+"Of course I mean that.  I couldn't marry George."
+
+"Why not?"  Rose inquired blankly.  When no response came to her
+question, she caught her sister's arm and turned her towards her and
+looked her steadily in the eyes.
+
+"Tell me," she said quietly, "what there is between you and Paul Hallam?
+You've changed since you knew him.  You are more reserved, and you've
+lost your high spirits.  Who is Paul Hallam?  And why does he write to
+you?  What is he to you?"
+
+"He is just a friend," Esme answered.
+
+"You love him," Rose said.  "Do you think I am so dense as not to have
+discovered that?  You can trust me.  I've not let Jim guess that I know
+who your correspondent is.  I've kept your counsel all the time; it's
+your affair.  But I think you might tell me."
+
+Esme made a gesture that was at once a protest and an appeal.  She sat
+straighter, with her hands locked together in her lap, and stared out at
+the moonlight unseeingly.
+
+"I'd tell you if there was anything to tell," she said.  "There isn't.
+There has never been any talk of love between us ever.  We are just good
+friends."
+
+"But you love him?"  Rose persisted.
+
+"Yes, I love him with all my heart.  If I never see him again I will go
+on loving him for the rest of my life."
+
+In face of this Rose found nothing to say.  The situation had got beyond
+her.  She felt increasingly curious.  She wanted to know more about this
+man; but Esme's manner baffled her.  It was very evident that the
+subject was distressing to the girl.  There was something behind all
+this of which she was in ignorance and which she felt she ought to be
+told.  She put one or two leading questions, but all she elicited was
+the fact that Hallam was a man of independent means and no fixed abode.
+That struck Rose as significant.  If no duties engrossed him it was odd
+that he should be satisfied to communicate with the girl only by post.
+If he were sufficiently interested in her to keep up a correspondence,
+why did he never come to see her?
+
+"I would advise you to put Paul Hallam out of your thoughts," she said,
+as an outcome of these reflections.
+
+Then she kissed the girl, and got off the bed, and stood hesitating
+between the bed and the door, sleepy, yet reluctant to leave her sister
+alone.
+
+"I hoped when I came in you would have a different story to tell me,"
+she added.  "Don't waste your life, thinking of a man who doesn't care
+enough to want to come and see you.  George is honest, and he loves you.
+It's a pity to throw away a really good chance of happiness."
+
+"To marry a man when you love another would not bring happiness," Esme
+said, facing her sister in the moonlight, half undressed, and with her
+hair falling about her shoulders and shading her face.  "And it wouldn't
+be fair to George."
+
+"I expect George, like most people, would prefer half a loaf to no
+bread," Rose answered.  She opened the door.  "Good-night, dear," she
+said softly.  "You go to sleep, and don't bother your head about any of
+them.  Men aren't worth half the tears women waste on them."
+
+She returned to her own room, and stood for a moment or so looking
+thoughtfully at the sleeping face of her husband, as he lay on his back
+with arms spread wide across the bed, and a faint smile touched her
+lips.
+
+"It is all beauty and romance till we marry you," she mused.  "Then we
+discover that our demi-gods are just mere men.  I wonder whether I would
+have wept over you in the old days? ...  I didn't anyway."
+
+With which she got into bed and fell asleep.
+
+But Esme did not sleep.  She lay awake in the hot stuffy darkness of her
+little room, which the kitchen stove abetted the sun in keeping hot by
+day, while the warm slates of the too adjacent roof prevented any
+appreciable decrease in temperature during the night--lay awake with her
+mind filled with the thought of one man, and her imagination afire with
+the memory of splashes of moonlight on a heaving mass of water that
+stretched away endlessly and laved the moonlit, rock-strewn beach of a
+little bay along the coast.  Then, with the dawn, she fell asleep and
+dreamed of the moonlight and of Paul Hallam.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
+
+From dreaming of Hallam at night and thinking of him in the daytime,
+Esme arrived at a stage of almost incredible longing to see him again.
+Letters did not satisfy her.  She wanted to hear his voice speaking to
+her, wanted to feel his presence, wanted, above all, to discover whether
+the months had changed him, and if the lapse of time had decreased his
+kindly feeling for her in any way.  His letters no longer referred to
+the possibility of meeting: they became more formal in tone as time went
+by.
+
+Soon after her tennis victory he wrote congratulating her on the event.
+She had not written to him on the subject; his information had been
+gleaned from the papers.
+
+"I see you have been distinguishing yourself on the tennis courts," he
+wrote.  "Why do you leave me to discover the tale of your triumphs from
+the newspapers?  I prefer to hear of these things first hand.  The news
+furnished a further link with the old Zuurberg days.  I recall how you
+practised with Sinclair then.  So you keep hold on the thread of that
+acquaintance also?"
+
+It occurred to Esme that this circumstance had displeased him.  She
+wished that she had written to him about the tournament and her part in
+it.  It did seem a little odd, when she came to think of it, that she
+had suppressed this piece of news.
+
+His letter was brief; and contained very little news of personal
+interest.  It read as though it had been written with an effort, and not
+because he wanted to talk to her.  A first fear that he might weary of
+the correspondence gripped her.  If he ceased to write she would be
+desolate.  His letters had come to mean so much to her: they caught her
+away from the dreary routine of her days; they coloured life for her
+warmly, kept her interest on the alert.  Giving music lessons endlessly
+through the long, hot days, returning to the stuffy overcrowded little
+house where numberless small duties constantly demanded her attention,
+was not an existence calculated to add romance to life.  She had grown
+weary of these things.  The blood in her veins was astir like the sap in
+the trees in the springtime.  Love budded in her heart; it only awaited
+a sign to burst into flower.
+
+There were times when she fancied she read in Hallam's letters an
+intimation that he wanted her.  He spoke often of his loneliness, and
+made reference to the happiness of their time together.  But the months
+went by and he did not come, and into his letters crept a new note of
+reserve.  Then followed a period of silence, after which he wrote from a
+totally new address and begged for news of her.  She allowed herself
+twenty-four hours for reflection; then she replied to his letter in the
+old friendly vein.
+
+It was nearing the vacation, and she spoke of needing a holiday, and
+told him that she could not decide where to go.
+
+"I've thought of the Zuurberg," she wrote; "but your remark about
+walking among tombstones sticks in my memory unpleasantly.  I am afraid
+it would be just that."
+
+To which he replied from De Aar:
+
+"There is a dignity about monuments which is soothing.  My former
+remarks were ill-considered.  You might do worse than walk among
+memories.  Try the Zuurberg again, and tell me what you feel in respect
+to resuscitated emotions.  I would suggest that you came up here, but it
+is a long journey and too hot for the time of the year."
+
+Clearly he did not want her to join him.  That thought wounded her.  It
+had been in her mind when she told him of her indecision that he might
+propose meeting somewhere; that he made no such proposal seemed to prove
+that he did not desire to see her.  She felt vexed with herself for
+having mentioned the subject to him.  Once again the feeling of having
+been snubbed by this man tormented her.  In the old days it had caused
+her indignation, but now it hurt.
+
+The question of her holiday became a matter for debate in her mind.  She
+no longer desired to go to the Zuurberg; but the fear that he might read
+in a change of plan her reason for deciding against it stiffened her
+resolve to do what she did not want to do.  The Zuurberg had not lost
+its attraction for her; but it would be, she knew, haunted with
+memories, where the ghosts of old pleasures would meet her at every
+turn.
+
+Fear of these ghosts prompted her to suggest taking the children with
+her, a proposal which led to a wordy discussion as to ways and means.
+Their father did not consider change necessary for them.  Rose disputed
+this; she wished them to go.
+
+"Other people's children go away," she insisted finally on a softer
+note.  "If we can't afford a holiday for ourselves we ought to let them
+have one.  I think we might manage it, Jim, don't you?"
+
+This direct appeal from her, to which he was unaccustomed, took him
+aback.  He was indeed surprised into acquiescing.  In the end he spoke
+as if it had been his wish all along.  Later, when he left the room,
+Rose looked across at her sister and smiled quietly.
+
+"That was accomplished through the exercise of a little of the tact you
+advocate," she said.
+
+"It's worth it, don't you think?"  Esme returned, and laughed.  "All he
+needs is management."
+
+"Most men, I suppose, need that.  You can't drive them in the direction
+you wish, but if you can make them believe it's the way they want to go,
+they start off at the gallop.  Funny animals, aren't they?"
+
+"Some of them are rather nice," Esme ventured.
+
+"Some of them--perhaps.  But you don't know; you aren't married.  A girl
+never really knows a man--knows him, I mean, for what he is underneath
+the veneer of social pretences until she has lived with him.  Then
+little things peep out, selfishnesses--like ugly excrescences upon the
+smooth surfaces you fancied were rather fine and noble.  A man when he
+is a lover is all chivalrous gentleness.  Well, the chivalry is mostly
+veneer.  Jim always gives up his seat in a tram to a woman; when he is
+in his own home, you may have noticed, he takes the most comfortable
+chair.  They have to relax sometimes, you see; it isn't possible to live
+up to that level always.  I'd rather a man were a bear outside the home
+and considerate in it.  There are such men, I suppose, but I haven't met
+them."
+
+"There are such men," Esme repeated, and thought of Hallam's lack of
+social manner.  She wondered whether the gentleness which she knew to be
+in him would manifest itself in the home.  She could not imagine him
+behaving altogether selfishly towards any one for whom he cared.
+
+"Husbands want training, like children," Rose went on.  "I didn't train
+my man; I began by spoiling him.  That's where most girls make a
+mistake.  Then, when the babies come, the spoiling ceases generally.
+But the harm is done.  I have often observed that the husbands of
+selfish women are a long way the nicest.  Men like peace; they will
+sacrifice a great deal in order to get it."
+
+"It is rather an agreeable thing," Esme said, reflecting that a little
+more of it in her sister's household would make life pleasanter.
+
+"I dare say it is; but it can't be had on an insufficient income.  If
+you like peace so much, why do you take the children with you on your
+holiday?  You won't get peace where they are."
+
+"Oh! we'll get along.  We shall be out all day, and there will be other
+children for them to play with.  They won't worry me."
+
+"It's nice of you to be bothered with them," Rose said.  She scrutinised
+her sister closely, and, curiosity getting the upper hand, asked
+bluntly: "Where is Paul Hallam now?"
+
+"On the Karroo," Esme answered, surprised.  "Why?"
+
+"I didn't know.  I thought perhaps you might meet at the Zuurberg."
+
+"No.  He left there long ago."
+
+"Well, but he might have felt it worth his while to go back when you
+were there.  I don't understand that affair, Esme.  I don't trust the
+man.  My dear, I don't trust him.  And you are wearing yourself out,
+thinking of him.  You are losing your vitality.  You aren't as pretty as
+you were.  No."  She surveyed the girl fixedly with adversely
+criticising eyes.  "You are _not_ so pretty."
+
+This came as a shock to Esme.  She wanted to look in the glass over the
+mantelpiece; but her sense of dignity and the fitness of things kept her
+glued to her seat.  What, after all, did it matter if her looks
+departed?  There was no one to note these things nor feel distressed on
+their account.
+
+"Why does he continue to write to you, and never come to see you?"  Rose
+asked.  "It's not fair to you.  And there's George...  If it wasn't for
+Paul Hallam you would marry George.  He is a good fellow, and he's
+getting on.  It would be a most suitable arrangement.  You don't want to
+teach all your life.  You want a home.  Every woman does.  Instead you
+fill your head with romantic nonsense, and make yourself miserable, and
+George miserable--for a man who doesn't care.  You could forget him if
+you left off corresponding.  Why do you let him play with you?"
+
+"He doesn't play with me," Esme answered, flushing.  "He never asked me
+for anything more than friendship.  I give him that because it is a help
+to him, and because he is lonely.  Why cannot a man and a girl be
+friends?"
+
+"I should have thought your own case furnished an answer to that," Rose
+said.  "In a friendship between a man and a girl one of them invariably
+falls in love.  You can't get away from nature.  The eternal question of
+sex hides behind all these unequal friendships.  That's what makes them
+interesting.  But these interesting relationships can spoil one's life.
+I wish that you had never met this man.  I feel uneasy about it."
+
+Esme sat in an attitude of disturbed attention, and kept her eyes
+studiously averted from her sister's.  There was just sufficient reason
+in her discursive statements to cause the girl to wince mentally.  She
+was beginning to believe that she was giving more than Paul Hallam
+wanted from her, more than he dreamed of when he proposed continuing the
+friendship.  This thought was humiliating; but only temporarily so: even
+as she felt its sting another thought drew the venom from it.  If she
+could help him, even a little, it was worth while.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.
+
+"To revisit a familiar spot is like walking among tombstones.  Every
+point recalls a memory, and memory belongs to the past."
+
+Very vividly, like something heard long ago but never before realised,
+these words which Hallam had uttered on the morning she left the
+Zuurberg all those weary months before, echoed in Esme's thoughts when
+she made her second journey up the mountain road.  The truth of them
+struck her like a thing which hurts.  Her memories came back to her, as
+he had said they would, with the dust on them.  And there was no evading
+them; they obtruded at every point.
+
+At Coerney there was the same wait under the trees before the cart was
+ready to start; the same languid stillness brooded over the place, the
+same enervating heat.  Here was the first tombstone.  She looked about
+her with reminiscent eyes, marked the spot where she had sat with Hallam
+while they waited for the train to come in, realised the crowd of new
+impressions which jostled the memories in her brain, and fell into
+thought.
+
+The children were busy exploring.  The sound of their gay, excited
+voices came to her distantly on the languid air.  But she could not see
+them; their figures were hidden among the trees.
+
+Everything was much the same as on her former visit.  There were two
+other travellers beside her party: they had gone into the hotel for
+refreshments.  Presently they came out.  The horses appeared with the
+driver, and the business of inspanning began.  The children wandered
+back and became actively interested in these proceedings.  John wished
+to drive: a compromise was effected by his being allowed to sit beside
+the driver and hold the whip.  Then began the toil upward.
+
+With every mile of the journey memories came crowding back into Esme's
+mind, a dismal procession of pale ghosts that came and went and left a
+feeling of greater loneliness when they passed.  These memories of her
+first glowing impressions, when excitement and a sense of adventure had
+coloured her imagination, gave to the present occasion a sort of
+flatness: the wonder of romance was missing from the picture.  She
+looked about her with intent, mystified eyes.  Everywhere there were
+tombstones; they met her all along the route.
+
+Yet the beauty of the place remained unchanged.  The wild grandeur of
+the scenery, the magnificent solitude, the almost terrifying depths of
+the chasm which lost itself in the froth of green below, these things
+impressed her as they had impressed her before with a wondering
+admiration that held something of awe in it; but whereas before, though
+she had believed herself to be lonely, hope had travelled with her as a
+companion; on this occasion there was no joyful anticipation in her
+heart, only a sense of disappointment that the finish of the journey
+promised nothing more than the usual holiday offers--rest and change
+from the ordinary busy life.
+
+She wished, with an urgency no less insistent because of its futility,
+that she had decided on some other place--any other place--in which to
+spend her holiday.  The mountain road was haunted with the ghosts of
+dead pleasures; the gorge was haunted; its secret places were the
+repositories for the thoughts of yesterday, for the dreams which pass
+with the night.
+
+She gazed down into the black-green silences and felt her despondency
+deepen.  These familiar things linked up her life so completely with the
+one brief romance it had ever known.  She could not disentangle her
+thoughts from the past.  Everywhere her eyes turned, each fresh curve in
+the road, brought back recollections of Hallam, and of their drive down
+the mountain together.  What was he doing now?  Where was he, while she
+was being borne higher and higher up the steep ascent?
+
+Every now and again the children turned in their seats to flash some
+question at her, or to point out some amazing novelty which caught their
+eager attention.  The big tree across the road, which cut through its
+giant trunk, was a source of wonder and delight to them.  John forgot
+his dignity and allowed himself to be impressed by its dimensions.
+
+"Man! but they can grow trees up this way," he remarked to the driver.
+
+Whereat the driver unbent so far as to permit him to drive under the
+tree.  Whatever his aunt thought about it, John thoroughly enjoyed the
+experience of that journey up the mountain road.  But when the hotel
+broke first upon his sight he was a little disappointed by its
+unpretentious appearance.
+
+"It isn't very big.  It's just like an ordinary house," he complained.
+
+"I expect you'll find there is room enough for you inside," Esme said.
+
+"Gimme my suit-case.  I'll go and find out," John replied.
+
+The cart drew up before the entrance.  John scrambled down and waited
+impatiently for his luggage.  He had never owned a suit-case before.  He
+insisted upon carrying it.  This delayed the party.  Esme was obliged to
+wait while the cart was unloaded, until John's baggage came to light and
+was given into his care.  Declining assistance, he struggled with his
+burden manfully up the short path, and, flushed and a little short of
+breath, deposited it on the stoep with an air of satisfaction.  Some one
+came forward and offered to carry it inside for him; but John was
+distrustful of these overtures.
+
+"I can manage," he said politely, to the amusement of a man who was
+seated on the stoep, "if you'll show me the way, please."
+
+Before following his conductor he looked round for his aunt and sister;
+and the man who had shown amusement looked in the same direction, and
+then stood up.  John was not interested in the stranger's movements; he
+was anxious to go inside and unpack; but the others were so slow in
+coming.  Mary had halted in the path to fondle an amazingly fat white
+cat.  John was not keen on cats; he preferred a dog.  He wished they
+would hurry up.
+
+"John," Mary's shrill voice called on a note of enthusiasm, "it's the
+darlingest thing, and it's called Snowflake."
+
+"Oh, _come_ on!"  John returned.
+
+Mary came on at a run, and Esme followed leisurely.  And then another
+delay occurred.  John's patience was exhausted.  Girls were all alike,
+he reflected scornfully; they made a fuss over everything they met.  He
+did not understand why his aunt should stop to speak to the man who had
+been seated on the stoep, and who now stepped off the stoep and went to
+meet her.  It seemed as though she had forgotten that he was waiting for
+her to go in with him.
+
+She had stopped still in the path and was talking to the man.  She had
+forgotten John and his suit-case altogether; she had forgotten
+everything.  The weary months of waiting had slipped out of the picture;
+the present had rolled back into the past.  She was back in the old spot
+with the man beside her whose presence made for her the magic of the
+place.  The ghosts which had met and mocked her on the journey were
+finally laid to rest.
+
+Hallam had come down the path quickly, and stood in front of her and
+blocked her way.  She stood still, flushed and wondering, and looked at
+him with eyes which told a tale.
+
+"I began to think you hadn't come," he said.
+
+"Oh!" she said, and held out a hand with a slightly nervous laugh.  "I
+never expected to see you.  Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"I was coming to the station to meet you," he said, "but the cart went
+away fairly loaded.  I have been sitting here waiting for you for the
+past two days.  What do you suppose I meant, you dense little thing,
+when I advised you to take your holiday here?  Do you think I'd have
+left you to wander alone among the musty relics you dreaded? ...  I am
+going to take you to-morrow morning to see the sun rise," he added in a
+lighter tone.
+
+Esme laughed happily.
+
+"I haven't seen the sun rise since the last time we saw it together,"
+she said, and scrutinised him for the first time with unwavering eyes.
+
+She thought him looking extremely well and fit.  He appeared younger and
+altogether more sure of himself.  And the stoop of the shoulders was
+less noticeable; he carried himself better.  He met her eyes and smiled.
+
+"I rather suspected your early morning activity was a cultivation," he
+said.  "It is possible, I have found, to discard habits as well as to
+cultivate them."
+
+That was the only reference he made to the long months he had spent
+fighting his baser self.  He did not know whether she caught the drift
+of his remark.  It did not seem to him to matter much.  There was
+manifestly very little need for explanations on either side.  They took
+one another for granted.  They took their love for one another for
+granted; it stood revealed, a thing which needed no words, which
+expressed itself mutely in their satisfaction in one another.  They
+gazed into each other's eyes, and there was no shadow of doubt in their
+minds at all.
+
+"You are looking well," she said.
+
+"Yes," he said; "I feel well.  I feel amazingly, extravagantly well.  So
+do you.  You're radiant.  That's because we are feeling so extremely
+pleased, both of us, with life and with ourselves,--particularly with
+ourselves.  We are going to have the best of times together.  I have
+been looking forward to this for months.  And now you're here...  It is
+almost as if we had never parted.  It's better, really; the break brings
+us nearer.  It's just good."
+
+The happiness which she felt shone in her face.  She looked about her at
+the familiar little garden, at the homely comfortable hotel, and the
+small stoep in front of the house, where John and Mary waited, John
+seated on the steps with his precious suit-case beside him.  Then she
+looked back into the man's face, and her eyes were grave and tender when
+they met his.
+
+"I had forgotten the children," she said.
+
+He glanced over his shoulder.
+
+"The little chap with the suit-case," he said.  "And the girl--yes.  Who
+are they?"
+
+She explained them.
+
+"I brought them with me to keep away the ghosts," she said.
+
+He laughed.
+
+"Well, they are here.  I wish they weren't; but we'll make the best of
+it.  It doesn't very much matter.  The sooner they get used to me and
+the situation, the better.  If there is any one sufficiently
+good-natured to foster them we will shift our responsibilities.  I am
+going to monopolise you.  I've been lonely ever since I said good-bye to
+you at Coerney."
+
+He turned and walked beside her up the short path to the stoep.
+
+"I'm glad to have you back," he said.
+
+John and Mary, staring with round-eyed curiosity at the pair as they
+advanced, wondered why their aunt looked so shy, and why she coloured
+suddenly from neck to brow and looked down and spoke softly.
+
+"It's good to be back," she replied.
+
+They came to a halt at the steps; and John, remembering his manners,
+stood up, but continued to stare, unabashed.
+
+"This is John," Esme said with greater confidence; and John held out a
+small, hot hand.
+
+"How d'ye do?" he said, as one man to another.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.
+
+The young Bainbridges were not slow in coming to a conclusion in regard
+to the condition of affairs between Hallam and their aunt.  John
+pronounced Hallam as being "all right"; Mary thought him old.  But then
+her aunt was rather old also; aunts are not girls.  Mary viewed this
+mature romance with feminine curiosity.  She thought it odd, but
+immensely interesting.  She dogged their footsteps.
+
+"I believe Mr Hallam is in love with Auntie," she confided to John, who
+probably unaided would not have discovered this surprising fact.
+
+"I wonder!"  John said, and pondered the announcement.  "I think I'll
+ask him," he added.
+
+He took an early opportunity of doing so.  He waylaid the pair,
+returning from their morning walk, and planted himself in front of
+Hallam, looking squarely up at him, with his hands in his pockets, in an
+attitude so reminiscent of his father as to move Esme to merriment.  Her
+laugh ended in a strangled gurgle when John spoke.
+
+"Are you going to marry Auntie, Mr Hallam?"  John asked with a
+directness that would have disconcerted most people, but at which Hallam
+only smiled.
+
+"I am," he answered.  "I hope you don't object?"
+
+"No; that's all right," John said amiably.  "I only wanted to know."
+
+And then he wandered off to join Mary and impart the result of his
+inquiries to her.  Hallam looked at Esme, and turned about abruptly, and
+proceeded to walk with her away from the hotel.
+
+"I think," she said hesitatingly, "that I ought to go in."
+
+"Not yet," he said.  "I want to talk to you.  You may think that that
+was an odd sort of proposal; but the little chap forced my hand.  It is
+amazing how sharp children are.  Did you mind?"
+
+"No," she replied, confused but extraordinarily happy.  "I was a little
+unprepared though."
+
+They had both taken things so much for granted that she had not noticed
+that he had never definitely asked her to marry him.  That part of it
+did not seem to matter.
+
+"You knew," he said, "how things were?  I think we both assumed it from
+the moment you arrived.  But John has put matters on a businesslike
+footing.  I said I meant to marry you.  I do--if you'll take me.  You
+know what I am.  I think you know more about me than any one.  Any good
+that is in me is of your making--"
+
+"No," she interrupted quickly.  But he took no heed of that, and went on
+as if she had not spoken.
+
+"When I met you I was drifting.  No other influence, I believe, could
+have pulled me up.  It was not merely that you made me realise the folly
+of wasting my life; you opened my mind to more than that.  I have come
+to see that man has a duty towards his fellow-men; that he has got to
+serve the community: if he serve it ill, he plays a mean part; if his
+service be good he doesn't merit praise, he is simply doing his job.
+You have pulled me out of the mire; now that I have cleaned some of the
+mud off I want you to take me by the hand and continue the journey with
+me.  There isn't any need for me to say in words that I love you.  I
+think you guessed that long ago."
+
+He looked down and saw her face all flushed and confused, with eyes, too
+shy to meet his own, lowered till the lashes touched her cheeks.  He
+longed to take her in his arms and kiss her; but the open road was ill
+suited to his purpose, and he decided to wait.
+
+"Dear, will you marry me?" he asked.
+
+For one fleeting moment she lifted her eyes to his face, and her look
+was so sweet and so gravely tender when it met his that his longing
+increased.  Then she looked away again and answered softly:
+
+"Yes."
+
+Bald little monosyllable, which was all her lips could utter though her
+heart was filled with love for him; but it sufficed for Hallam.  He
+pressed closer to her and bent down over her and touched her hand.
+
+"I want to kiss you," he muttered.  "I'm longing to kiss your lips."
+
+She looked up, startled, and moved a little away from him.  The
+passionate urgency in his voice was so altogether unexpected and
+unfamiliar that she felt disquieted.  She was afraid of being seen from
+the hotel.
+
+"Not now," she faltered.  "Wait, I haven't got used to the idea yet.
+Not now."
+
+He laughed quietly.
+
+"Little duffer!" he said.  "Do you suppose I am going to make love to
+you in front of the windows of the hotel?  I'll wait--until we are
+alone.  Then..."
+
+Voice and eyes were eloquent.  There was an air of confident mastery
+about him.  She felt increasingly shy of him.  He seemed suddenly to
+loom bigger, to express qualities of a virile and dominating nature
+which she had not suspected were in him.  It was as though he put out a
+hand and took her heart in it and held it in a firm grasp.  It
+frightened her just a little.  Her breath came quicker and her pulses
+beat fast.  They turned about and started to walk back.
+
+"I think we had better go and have some breakfast," he said, with an
+amused look at her confused face.  "If we delay any longer we shall be
+faced with more awkward questions from young John.  After breakfast we
+will go in search of solitude and have our talk.  There are endless
+things I want to say to you."
+
+They entered the hotel, separating at the door to meet again at the
+breakfast-table.  It was a silent meal so far as they were concerned, as
+silent as those meals through which they had sat in the early days of
+their acquaintance, when the man had maintained a moody aloofness
+painfully embarrassing to his companion.  She felt no embarrassment any
+longer when he did not talk at table, and the chatter of the children
+made conversation difficult.
+
+She was glad on that particular occasion that she had the children to
+distract her attention.  She felt so extraordinarily shy of the man
+beside her, shy of the accepted position of their new relations.  She
+felt that she must drag out the meal indefinitely: she wanted to
+postpone that walk.  But Hallam held altogether different views; and
+presently he got up and prepared to leave the table.
+
+"Hurry up!" he said.  "You'll find me waiting for you on the stoep."
+
+Then he went out, and she found herself confronted with the problem of
+disposing of John and Mary for the morning.  They were desirous of
+accompanying her.  The situation held an absorbing interest for them.
+
+"I am going to be your bridesmaid, Auntie," Mary said, fascinated with
+the prospect of a wedding looming in the near future.  "And wear a blue
+dress," she added.
+
+John's face became grimly resolute.
+
+"Mr Hallam needn't count on me for best man," he announced.  "I'm off
+that."
+
+Esme left them to the discussion of these weighty matters under the
+sympathetic guardianship of a visitor at the hotel, who had children of
+her own and did not mind an addition to the party, and joined Hallam.
+They set out together on their first walk since their engagement.
+
+For a time they walked in silence, both of them a little impressed with
+the strangeness of the new situation.  Hallam's face was grave and
+thoughtful, and every now and again he turned to the girl with a curious
+eagerness in his eyes, and an added tenderness in the look he gave her.
+
+It was altogether a memorable and wonderful occasion.  He liked the
+shyness of her mood.  It surprised and amused him to see her eyes droop
+before his gaze, and the colour come and go in her cheeks.  He had known
+her before only as a very self-possessed young woman; but she revealed
+to him that morning, as he revealed to her, new and unexpected qualities
+that were profoundly interesting.  Again there came over him the longing
+to take her in his arms and hold her close against his heart.
+
+He took her hand when they were well away from the hotel, and they
+walked along together thus and talked disjointedly and a trifle
+self-consciously of trivial things.  Presently Hallam said:
+
+"I am going back with you when you leave.  I have to make the
+acquaintance of your people.  That is a necessary preliminary.
+Afterwards we will speed matters, and get married without undue delay.
+There isn't any object in waiting, is there?  I don't feel that I can
+wait.  I want you so."
+
+"I'll have to resign my position as music teacher," she said.  "There is
+nothing else to consider.  You know, I can't quite realise it yet.  It
+all seems so strange and wonderful."
+
+"It is wonderful," he answered gravely.  "It's wonderful to me that you
+should love me.  It seems more wonderful still that you trust me.  Your
+belief in me has been more helpful than any sermon.  It is a sermon.
+It's a sort of religion.  I've leaned on you... you little thing, whom I
+could pick up and toss over my shoulder!  Dear, you'll never know how
+much I love you.  I can't put it into words."
+
+She squeezed his hand understandingly.  It was the same with her.  She
+could never have told him all that was in her heart.
+
+"There isn't any need for words," she said softly.
+
+"No."  He looked at her quickly.  "You do understand," he said.  "You've
+always understood.  From the first we seemed to strike the same thoughts
+instinctively.  We get at one another somehow.  I feel as if I had known
+you all my life."
+
+"And I," she answered with a shy little laugh, "feel that I am only
+beginning to know you.  Each time I am with you something fresh and
+unexpected leaps to the surface, and I've got to start again from the
+beginning and reconstruct all my ideas of you.  I wonder if it will
+always be like that?"
+
+"You will find me consistent in one respect anyhow," he answered.
+
+He drew her into the shadow of some trees towards which their steps had
+been directed, and came to a halt facing her, and dropped her hand and
+put his arms around her.
+
+"Now..." he said.
+
+He held her closely and for the first time kissed her lips.
+
+Book 2--CHAPTER NINETEEN.
+
+Esme was married from her sister's house very quietly, and with what
+Rose considered quite unnecessary haste.  The whole affair was so sudden
+and so altogether unexpected that she scarcely knew whether to be the
+more pleased or the more dismayed by her sister's change of fortune.
+She never felt quite at ease with her future brother-in-law, and in her
+heart she regretted that it was not George Sinclair upon whom Esme's
+choice had fallen.  Marriage with Hallam meant a more complete
+separation from the old life: it would remove the girl altogether from
+her former associations.  While she recognised the worldly advantages of
+the match she resented this: had Esme married Sinclair they would have
+continued in touch with one another.  But Hallam intended making his
+home in Cape Town, in one of the suburbs, after a prolonged honeymoon
+spent in Europe.  The honeymoon, she gathered, would extend over a year.
+
+It was all very amazing and rather wonderful.  And Esme appeared to be
+supremely happy; that, after all, was the chief thing.
+
+Rose, while she watched from her seat in church, the girl standing
+before the altar beside the man whose name she was taking, experienced a
+curious misgiving which, though she felt it to be unreasonable, she
+could not shake off.  Largely, she believed, she was influenced by
+something Sinclair had said when she informed him of Esme's engagement.
+He had been taken by surprise and was greatly upset by the news.  She
+had very vividly in her memory the sight of his face as he sat and
+stared at her with stunned, blue eyes, and muttered hoarsely:
+
+"My God! ...  Hallam! ...  I could have stood it had it been any one
+else."
+
+She had asked him what he meant, what he knew of Hallam?  And he had
+answered shortly, "Nothing," and gone away hurriedly.  She had not seen
+him since.
+
+That this scene should come back to her now, obtruding itself in the
+middle of the marriage service, struck her as portentous.  What had he
+meant?  Some other emotion deeper than jealousy had moved him surely to
+speak as he had done.  Her eyes rested contemplatively on Hallam's face.
+It was a fine face, a strong face, and the keen eyes were reassuring.
+The slight stoop of the shoulders and the reserved inward manner of the
+man suggested the scholar and thinker.  Rose believed that he was
+clever; Jim said so.  Neither she nor her husband understood him or felt
+at ease in his society.  He displayed no interest in any of the family,
+save young John, whose conversation seemed to amuse him.  John and he
+remained on terms of frank friendliness, marked by an air of patronage
+on John's side and an entire absence of sentiment on the part of both.
+But in relation to the rest he was the same silent unsociable man who
+had stayed for months at the Zuurberg without exchanging remarks with
+any one.
+
+It puzzled Rose to understand what formed his great attraction in her
+sister's eyes.  That Esme was very deeply in love was evident; she was
+like a girl suddenly transformed; her face was alight with a glow of
+happiness which made it beautiful even to Rose's accustomed eyes.
+
+Rose sat and watched her, perplexed and thoughtful, with the strange
+uneasiness disturbing her mind and distracting her thoughts from the
+service.  Why she should feel anxious she did not know; unless it was
+the result of Sinclair's speech.  But throughout the service the sense
+of disaster held with her, and later in the vestry, when the bride was
+signing the register, she experienced an overwhelming desire to cry, and
+shed a few surreptitious tears with the vexed knowledge that Hallam was
+observant of her emotion.  Her eyes met his critical gaze a little
+defiantly with a faint hostility in them; and she fancied while she
+looked back at him that a shadow like a passing regret momentarily
+crossed his face.  Then abruptly he turned to his wife and bent down and
+spoke to her and smiled.  The shadow, if it had been there, had left his
+face unclouded as before.
+
+The wedding party drove to the hotel for lunch, an arrangement which,
+while it pleased Jim exceedingly and met with the delighted approval of
+the children, occurred to Rose as altogether irregular.  It was not the
+bridegroom's duty to provide the wedding-breakfast, she had protested.
+But her husband talked her objections down and overruled them.
+
+"Hallam can afford to do it," he insisted.  "Why shouldn't he?  We can't
+give them a champagne breakfast anyhow."
+
+Besides the Bainbridges there was only one other guest, in the person of
+the best man, who was called Watkin, and whose acquaintance with the
+bridegroom seemed of the slightest.  The absence of any relation or
+intimate friend of Hallam was a further aggravation to Rose.  She looked
+at everything through dark-coloured glasses that day: no one else did:
+even John, whose respect for Hallam had decreased with the latter's
+deliberate committal of matrimony, allowed that there was considerable
+enjoyment to be got out of other people's weddings; the lunch at the
+"Grand" in particular appealed to him.
+
+Hallam bore himself well through the ordeal.  Whatever his feelings were
+in regard to his wife's relations he managed on the whole to conceal
+them fairly well.  Although he did not like Jim Bainbridge, and did not
+understand Rose in the remotest degree--he thought her disagreeable and
+commonplace and as unlike her sister as it was possible for a person
+intimately related to another to be--it pleased him to entertain them,
+and to note that they did full justice to his hospitality.
+
+Jim drank champagne, to which he was unaccustomed, and became
+surprisingly talkative and rather noisy; and Rose, responding to the
+same genial influence, relaxed, and forgot for a time her apprehensions.
+
+They made quite a merry party at their flower-decked table by the
+window, which opened on to the stoep and looked out upon the well-kept
+garden beyond.  It was so near the finish of that part of Esme's life
+that Hallam was content to see her happily surrounded with her people,
+and to do his share in making himself agreeable; but he longed to be
+through with it and started on the journey to Cape Town, where he
+proposed staying for a week before embarking for England.  When the talk
+was at its noisiest he felt Esme's hand reaching out under the table and
+touching his knee; his own hand went down and closed over it warmly
+while their eyes met in an understanding smile.  She felt grateful to
+him for the effort she knew he was making for her sake to play his part
+well.
+
+"Weddings," Jim remarked in a reminiscent vein, "always recall to my
+mind the day I took the plunge.  Odd sensation, getting married--
+uncertain business--rather like backing an outsider in a race.  You hope
+you've drawn a prize; but it's all a chance whether you have or not.
+It's tying a knot with your lips which you can't untie with your teeth.
+A man gets let in for this sort of thing.  He can't help himself.  He
+gets a sort of brain fever, and there it is--done."
+
+His wife directed a meaning glance towards his glass and smiled dryly.
+Hallam took up the challenge.
+
+"I think it is sometimes the woman who backs an outsider," he said.
+"But a light hand on the rein brings many a doubtful mount past the
+winning post."
+
+"You've got the fever all right," Jim returned.  "I know all about that.
+I had it in its most acute form."
+
+"Never mind that old complaint," Rose said soothingly.  "You are quite
+cured now."
+
+"That's all you know about it," he replied almost aggressively.  "That
+fever is recurrent.  Every married man who has ever experienced it knows
+that the germ once there lies latent for all time.  You hear of married
+people drifting apart...  Well, they do, you know--often; but generally
+they drift back again--or want to.  It's usage.  You get fed up--like
+you get fed up with saying your prayers every night."--Young John
+pricked up his ears and became interested in the talk.--"You leave 'em
+off.  Well, some time or other you come back to them.  You want to come
+back to them.  Prayer and love--they're pretty much about on a par."
+
+John's interest waned.  He helped himself to fruit and disregarded the
+company.
+
+"You are getting somewhat beyond my depths," the best man remarked.
+"These things haven't come my way."
+
+"They will," Jim ventured to predict.
+
+The best man looked at the bride and laughed.
+
+"I hope so," he answered gallantly; and introduced, with the ease of the
+man of the world, a lighter note into the talk.
+
+The entire party drove down to the jetty to see Hallam and his bride
+embark.  When she stood on the steps and watched her sister seated
+beside Hallam in the bobbing launch, smiling and radiantly happy, Rose's
+former misgivings reasserted themselves and remained with her while she
+looked after the crowded launch steering its course towards the mail
+boat, which lay far out amid the ships on the sunlit blue of the sea.
+
+Hallam turned to the girl, when they were well away from the shore, with
+a look of glad relief, and saw her eyes, happy and loving and trustful,
+lifted to his in sympathetic understanding.  He smiled down at her.
+
+"It's good to get off, to be alone together," he said.  "The thought of
+this moment has kept me going.  I believed we should never be through
+with it all."
+
+"I know," she said with a little laugh.  "But it's over.  We are
+together, Paul... for all our lives."
+
+"For all our lives," he repeated; and, oblivious of the crowd about
+them, pressed closer against her on the narrow seat.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY.
+
+The fulness of life made perfect by a perfect human love lifted Esme so
+completely out of the past that all her life which had gone before
+seemed as a dream, a thing indistinct and distant, with the haunting
+sense of unreality which clings to dreams in defiance of the vivid
+impression sometimes left on the mind.  To look back on the days of her
+girlhood was like looking back on the life of some one else.  The little
+hot bedroom, shaded by the pink oleander tree, the life of continuous
+discords in her sister's home, the daily drudgery of instructing
+unmusical pupils in an art they would never acquire, these things were
+as remote as if they had never been.  She looked back on those days
+wonderingly, comparing them with the present; and the present seemed the
+more beautiful by comparison with those earlier years.
+
+After their year of wandering Hallam and his wife returned to the Cape.
+No country they had seen appealed to either with the same magnetic
+attraction which the Peninsular held for both.  The house which Hallam
+took was not large; but it was luxurious in its appointments, and was
+beautifully situated, high, and surrounded with fine old trees which
+afforded shade and coolness on the hottest day.  From the windows of her
+new home, as from the garden, Esme had a view of the wide blue Atlantic
+stretching away endlessly to the far horizon; while, like a giant wall,
+rugged and grey, and towering in its immensity above the house, as it
+towered above the city, was the great square mountain, blue-grey in the
+sunlight, patterned gorgeously with the flowers which carpeted its
+slopes.  And at night there was the sea still, darkly swelling,
+mysterious, remote, restless, a black expanse moving ceaselessly under
+the motionless star-lit darkness above; beating with passionate energy
+upon the shore and tossing its foam-flecked waters against the rocks:
+there, too, was the mountain, stark and dominating, black and sharply
+defined against the sky.
+
+Always these wonders were there, and always they assumed fresh guises,
+revealed themselves in new and surprising aspects with the varying
+seasons and the shifting light.  It was good to sit out on the stoep in
+the warm still dusk and enjoy these things together in an intimate and
+undisturbed solitude.  They needed nothing else for the present, desired
+no companionship but each other's.  Hallam was no less misanthropic than
+before his marriage; but his life was happier and full of interest.  He
+was passionately in love; and his passion poured itself out in daily
+worship of this woman who gave him a full return, whose passion answered
+to his, equalled his in everything save its absorbed concentration on
+the individual to the exclusion of every other interest in life.  To
+shut out the world from her thoughts entirely, as Hallam did, was not
+possible to Esme.  She loved life and her fellow-beings.  Because she
+loved Paul better than all the world, with a love which was an emotion
+apart and different in quality from anything she had ever known before,
+she could not close her heart to every outside interest.  She was glad
+always to be with him, glad during the first months in their own home to
+have him to herself with no interruptions from the world beyond their
+walls.  But she did not desire to lead that shut in life always.  She
+wanted to go about among people, and to have him go with her; and she
+made this clear to him after a while to his no inconsiderable dismay.
+
+People called on her, and she returned their calls--alone; Hallam
+refused definitely to have any share in that.  She waived the point.  So
+many men evaded this social duty that it did not seem to her of great
+importance.  But when dinner and other invitations began to arrive, and
+he as flatly declined to accept them, she felt disappointed and showed
+it.  She wanted to take part in these things, and his objection made her
+participation impossible.
+
+"Why should you want to go?" he asked, with passionate resentment in his
+tones, on an occasion when she pressed him to accept an invitation to a
+private dance.  "I don't want to go to these things.  I don't care about
+them.  I want only you.  Why can't you be content with your home and me?
+Why are you not satisfied?"
+
+"Oh, Paul!" she said, and entwined his arm with both her arms and leaned
+against him confidingly.  "You know I'm satisfied.  But we are living in
+the world, dear; we can't shut ourselves off from it entirely.  We can't
+live just for ourselves."
+
+"Why not?" he asked.
+
+"But,"--she protested, and looked up at him with puzzled eyes.  "How can
+we?" she asked.  "We must take our part, like other people.  It isn't
+good to live shut off: it's cramping.  I love you, I love my home; but I
+want other things.  I want to see and talk with people.  I want to meet
+other women.  I want to--gossip--about the things women love discussing.
+I want to show off my clothes."
+
+"You show them off to me," he said.
+
+She laughed softly.
+
+"To you!--you unappreciative male!  I've everything in life to make a
+woman proud and glad and happy; and I want the world to know it.  I long
+to parade my happiness, as a manikin parades the fashions, to the
+admiration and the envy of all beholders.  Why shouldn't I?  Why
+shouldn't I dance, boy?  I love dancing.  I'd love to dance with you."
+
+"I can't dance," he answered.  "I don't do any of these things."
+
+"I'll teach you," she volunteered.  "It's altogether simple.  You've no
+idea how simple it is, nor how lovely, till you try."
+
+He smiled involuntarily.
+
+"At my time of life!  Imagine it!  I wonder what you'll ask me to do
+next?"
+
+"Well, you need not dance," she urged.  "You can go to the card room."
+
+"I don't care about cards," he answered obstinately and with a note of
+hard decision in his voice.  "And I don't like the idea of your dancing
+with other men.  Can't you give up these things--for me?"
+
+His objection surprised and vexed her.  It was to her absurd that he
+should feel jealous, even slightly jealous, at the thought of her
+dancing with any one else.  She felt hurt.  Surely he had sufficient
+evidence of her love to trust her?  She would have trusted him in any
+circumstances in her confident assurance of his love for her.  She did
+not understand the temper of his love.  It was not mistrust of her that
+moved him to object: it was dislike of the thought of any other man
+touching her, holding her in his arms even in the legitimate exercise of
+dancing.  His passion had more than a touch of the primitive male in its
+quality.  He wanted her to himself, shut away from the world, content to
+be alone with him always.  And that was not in the least Esme's view of
+things: her outlook was entirely modern and wholly free from
+self-consciousness.  She saw no reason why she should not enjoy herself
+in the same way in which other women enjoyed life.  She wanted to cure
+Paul of his misanthropy, not to cultivate it herself.  It was not an
+engaging quality; it was even a little ridiculous.
+
+"I would give up anything for you, Paul, if there was a good reason for
+the sacrifice," she said.  "But I think you are merely prejudiced.
+You've spent so much time alone that you've grown used to solitude; but
+it isn't good for you.  It isn't good for any one.  We can't live like
+that--shunning people as if we had something to hide.  I want to go out,
+and I want to invite people here--not very often, but occasionally.
+Dear, be sensible.  You gave up your solitude when you married me.  I
+can't let you slip back again."
+
+He moved restlessly and disengaged his arm from hers and stood looking
+across the garden into space and frowning heavily.  She watched him with
+anxious eyes.  After more than a year of married life this was the first
+cloud to gather in their radiant sky.
+
+"You can go where you please," he said ungraciously.  "I never supposed
+you cared so much for these things."
+
+"I can't go without you," she insisted.
+
+The frown on his brow deepened.
+
+"You know how I hate that sort of show," he answered.  "I've always
+avoided social functions.  They don't interest me."
+
+"Very well," she said.  "Then I must decline the invitation."
+
+He swung round on her quickly and caught her up in his arms and held her
+tightly, muttering against her lips, and punctuating the words with
+kisses.
+
+"Decline it... yes...  I can't let the world--any one--come between you
+and me.  Why should you want interests apart from your home?  Your home
+is here, little one, in the depths of my heart."
+
+She felt his heart thumping against his chest, beating hard and fast as
+the heart of some one labouring under great excitement; she heard his
+breath escaping in quick deep gasps, and saw the passionate ardour which
+burned in his eyes; and she gave way, yielding her will to his stronger
+will, reluctantly, but with a growing sense of the futility of striving
+against him any longer.  He silenced her protests with kisses, holding
+her head against his shoulder and keeping his lips on hers.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
+
+For a time Hallam kept the social world at arm's length, and continued
+to monopolise his wife, and to persuade himself that she needed nothing
+beyond his love to make life perfect for her, as it was for him.
+
+But Esme's more active temperament was not satisfied with the exclusion
+of every outside influence; and she chafed frequently at the monotony of
+her life, its gradually narrowing limits.  Hallam was a bookworm: he
+spent much of his time in reading.  When he was among his books she
+longed to go out and amuse herself in the ordinary way as she had done
+before her marriage; but if she went without consulting him he worried
+at her absence; when she mentioned that she was going he always laid
+aside his reading and accompanied her.  There were times when this
+amused her; there were other times when she felt merely exasperated.
+
+It became very clear to her that she would be obliged to make some stand
+or she would cease to have any life of her own at all.  She decided to
+take up tennis again; and joined the public courts on the advice of a
+woman with whom she was becoming intimately friendly, and who, despite
+Hallam's lack of response, continued to call and to bring her husband
+with her on occasions.
+
+The Garfields considered Hallam eccentric, and pitied his wife.  Sophy
+Garfield held out the hand of friendship, and Esme grasped it readily,
+and found in her a useful and agreeable acquaintance.  When Mrs
+Garfield proposed that she should join the tennis club, Esme caught at
+the suggestion eagerly.  She did not consult Hallam: she paid her
+subscription fee and told him later what she had done.  Although he did
+not receive the information graciously he raised no objection.  It was
+the least unpleasant diversion she had sought to impose so far.  He
+joined the club also with a view to accompanying her sometimes.  But he
+did not attend often; and after a while he gave up going and allowed her
+to develop some slight independence of him.  She made friends easily; he
+neither made nor desired friends.  In this respect they differed
+materially.  She wished that he would become more sociable.  He talked
+well when he chose: it would have afforded her immense pleasure to see
+him in the company of other men more often.
+
+But he kept to his home and his long tramps with her.  He bought her a
+horse and taught her to ride.  He was a keen horseman; and when she was
+sufficiently at home in the saddle they spent long days together,
+riding, in pursuit of a pleasure that never palled on either: the
+discovery of fresh and beautiful scenery.  In their love of nature they
+were entirely in accord.
+
+"I wish," Hallam said once, when they sat together on a lonely stretch
+of beach, with their horses knee-haltered and straying among the coarse
+grass higher up, "that I had taken you away into the wild somewhere--
+Central Africa--anywhere where white faces are rare, instead of making a
+home in the centre of civilisation.  These lonely places grip me.  I
+like to feel you beside me and know that the rest of the world is far
+off, too remote to trouble us.  Would you be happy in the wilds with
+me?"
+
+"I suppose I should be happy with you anywhere," she answered, and
+touched his hand caressingly as it lay on the sand close to hers.  "But
+I am not hungering for loneliness, Paul.  My instincts are civilised.
+I'm nervous in lonely places."
+
+"With me?" he asked.
+
+She met his eyes and smiled faintly.
+
+"Even with you I think I might feel fear at times in such solitude as
+you describe.  I remember how terrified I was at the Zuurberg that day,
+down the kloof, when you crashed through the bushes.  I thought of
+tigers--oh! of all sorts of horrors.  I wasn't shaped on heroic lines,
+man o' mine.  Leave me to the life of the city, with its comfortable
+laws and protections, its nice, safe orderliness, and the sense of
+security one gets in the midst of life.  What can the solitudes offer
+more than we already have?"
+
+"The difference between us is that you like crowds and I don't," he
+answered.  "Sometimes I feel that the crowd will get between us."
+
+"Paul!" she remonstrated.  She observed him closely as he leaned on his
+elbow beside her, playing idly with the sand, making patterns on it and
+effacing these again with his hand.  He turned his face towards hers,
+and his restless hands became still.  His keen eyes searched her face.
+
+"That strikes you as exaggerated," he said; "but it's not so.  I've
+watched you, and I see it coming.  You have quite a number of friends
+who are not my friends--"
+
+"They would be your friends if you would let them," she interposed.
+
+"Yes; I know it's my fault; but there it is.  You want friends.  That's
+perfectly natural.  You ought to have them.  You want amusement.  I
+hoped you wouldn't need any of these things, that you'd be satisfied, as
+I am, just to be together.  That was expecting too much--"
+
+"Oh! my dear," she said quickly, with a note of pain in her tones.  "I
+don't love you less because I love my kind; I love you better in
+relation to these others.  Paul, why do you say these things?  They
+hurt."
+
+"It wasn't my intention to hurt you," he said.  "I was merely trying to
+get the thing square in my mind.  I've got to get used to these things,
+you see.  I've been selfish.  When a man loves as I do, he is inclined
+to grow selfish and exacting.  Well, I've got to make a fight against
+that.  I don't like the idea of sharing you with the world at large; but
+I am forced to consider that as a necessary part of our compact."
+
+"Compact!" she echoed in a puzzled voice.
+
+"We compacted to love one another," he answered quietly.  "Love stands
+for sacrifice.  If we cannot give way in little things, the big things
+become more difficult to relinquish.  Your brother-in-law made one
+observation that was profoundly true, though he did not phrase it
+happily: love and prayer are synonymous terms.  My love for you is as a
+prayer in my heart.  I do not wish to lower it to a mere selfish human
+passion."
+
+"Oh, Paul!" she said.  And suddenly she dropped her face to his hand and
+her lips caressed it where it lay open, palm upward, on the sand.
+
+His talk of sacrifice made her desire to give up things also, to give up
+her will to him; but the persuasion that it was good for him to throw
+off his absorption, to adapt his life to the common rule and live more
+like other men, held her mute.  She would accept his sacrifices, all
+that he offered, and would prove to him in numberless tender ways how
+great was her appreciation of the unselfish love he gave her; how
+intense was her pride in it.  She had never loved him so much as in that
+moment when he gave her an insight into what his conception of love was.
+He so seldom spoke on the subject, and never before had spoken without
+reserve; it seemed to her that his talk that day threw a bright ray of
+light upon his feelings, and revealed to her very clearly the beauty of
+his ideal of love, hitherto so jealously locked in his inmost thoughts.
+
+A feeling of happiness that was as a song of gratitude warmed her heart.
+She pillowed her face on his hand and lay still on the burning sand
+beside him, undisturbed by the hot sun which beat upon her body, upon
+her face; loving its warmth which was as the warmth in her heart, a
+flame that glowed and burned and did not consume.
+
+Hallam rolled over on his elbow and lay watching her in contemplative
+silence for a space.  The feel of her cheek against his hand pleased
+him.  Her face was flushed and happy, and the look in the soft eyes when
+they met his moved him to lean over her and kiss their long lashes.
+Laughing, she opened them wide and looked up at him.
+
+"Paul, heart of my heart!" she cried.  "How you make me love you!"
+
+"Yes!" he said, and kissed her again.  "I wonder whose love is the
+stronger--yours or mine?"
+
+"We cannot prove that," she said.
+
+"Time may," he replied.  "The strength of love is tested by its
+endurance.  A great love endures through everything for all time."
+
+"A great love!" she repeated, and brushed his hand caressingly with her
+cheek.  "I never knew, until you taught me, how great love was."
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.
+
+Marriage, like every other relationship in life, becomes with time a
+matter of usage.  One by one the demands which the ardour of passion
+exacts relax imperceptibly, and love finds its level on a practical
+basis of mutual interests in the common daily round.
+
+Hallam's marriage was a reversal of the usual order, in which generally
+it falls to the woman to adapt herself more or less to the altered
+conditions.  In their case the change affected him more materially than
+it affected Esme: his life had become, as it were, uprooted, and the
+roots did not strike freely in new soil.  The change was not agreeable
+to him; but his love for his wife was of a quality which helped him to
+endure with a certain dogged patience many things that formerly he would
+not have entertained for a moment.  He suppressed his own inclinations:
+to a large extent he suppressed his feelings: mentally his life with her
+was a series of small deceptions, of pretences practised deliberately
+for the purpose of misleading her.  He feared to disappoint her.  His
+mind became a storehouse of reserved thoughts and inhibitions upon which
+he turned the key, locking its surprises against her.
+
+In certain respects, though she was unaware of this, he was a stranger
+to her: one side of his nature remained hidden from her, the weaker
+side, which most urgently needed her loving sympathy, and which shrank
+from exposure and misunderstanding with a sensitiveness of which he was
+conscious and secretly ashamed.  He was not the type of man to make an
+appeal even to the woman he loved.  He gave more than he exacted.  He
+gave more than she realised in her ignorance of the sacrifices he made
+in his attempts to bridge the abysmal gap in temperaments.  For her sake
+he endured many things which were to him boring and annoying in the
+extreme.  He made stupendous efforts to subdue his prejudices and adjust
+his life to meet the new demands.  But the nature of the man remained
+unchanged and suffered as a result of the artificial conditions of his
+self-imposed obligations.
+
+Three brief years of married happiness passed; and then Hallam began at
+first moderately, and always secretly to drink again.
+
+For a time Esme was unaware of this relapse on his part; for a further
+period she suspected it but could not be sure.  Then the old symptoms
+reappeared with terrible convincingness: she saw his hands grow shaky,
+his whole appearance degenerate, till he looked as she had seen him
+first on the stoep of the hotel at the Zuurberg, older, ill, nervous and
+morose, with a disregard for public opinion and a growing indifference
+as to whether she knew or not.
+
+Esme's eyes opened to the condition of things after a short visit paid
+to her sister, which Hallam readily agreed to her accepting but refused
+to accept for himself.  He had no wish to see his wife's relations; he
+preferred to remain at home.
+
+She parted from him reluctantly.  A feeling of anxiety gripped her at
+the thought of leaving him alone.  It was their first separation since
+their marriage.  But she wanted to see her sister again.  Rose's letter
+was reproachful; it conveyed the suggestion that the writer was hurt by
+her neglect.  The neglect on Esme's side was not wilful: she had wished
+to have her sister to stay with her; but Hallam had always seemed so
+disinclined to entertain any member of her family that she had been
+obliged to give up the idea.  But when Rose's letter came urging her to
+take a trip round to the Bay, she decided that she ought to go, unless
+she wished for a complete estrangement between them.  Hallam was quite
+agreeable.  He booked her a passage and saw her off by the boat; but at
+the last moment he showed a strong disinclination to part from her, and
+almost persuaded her to give up the idea and return with him.
+
+"It's too absurd," she said: "we are like a pair of children.  Why don't
+you come with me?"
+
+"No," he said.  "I'll wait at home for you.  Don't stay longer than you
+need."
+
+She watched him descend to the quay, and, leaning on the rail, looking
+down at him, the first intimation that things were not quite as they
+should be dawned on her, and filled her with a sense of uneasiness which
+grew with every hour of her separation from him.
+
+In the end she curtailed her visit and returned unexpectedly by train.
+
+She had sent a telegram informing Hallam when to expect her; and she
+found him on the platform waiting for her, and was struck immediately by
+the change in him.  Her heart sank within her, but she forced a smile to
+her lips and accompanied him out of the station and got into the waiting
+taxi.  He opened the door for her, fumbling with the catch with unsteady
+fingers, and got in after her and sat down heavily.
+
+"It didn't take you long to discover that home's the best place," he
+remarked, with a sideways furtive look at her.  "How did you find them
+all?  Jim still grousing, I suppose?  And the small boy a perennial note
+of interrogation?"
+
+"Everything was much the same," she answered in a dispirited voice.
+"They were all a little older in appearance, and the children have grown
+tremendously.  I wish you had been with me.  Rose was hurt, I think,
+because you did not go."
+
+"Oh, really!  I should have thought she would have felt relieved."
+
+"Why?"
+
+He disregarded the question.  Abruptly he put out an unsteady hand and
+laid it upon hers.
+
+"Tired?" he asked.
+
+"A little."  She twisted her hand round in her lap and her fingers
+closed upon his.  "What have you been doing during my absence?"
+
+"Mainly missing you," he answered.  "A reversion to one's bachelor days
+is a dull sort of holiday."
+
+"I know.  But what was I to do?  I don't want to lose touch altogether
+with my ain folk."
+
+"I have no folk," he said, "so I can't understand these family ties.  I
+think them a bore.  But if you had a good time that's the chief thing.
+You've a lot of friends at the Bay, and you find pleasure in them.  My
+friends are silent companions and are better suited to my taste.  How
+did your people think you were looking?  None the worse for being tied
+to this dull person, I hope?"
+
+She laughed and squeezed his hand.
+
+"They were impressed with my staid appearance, and the fact that I am
+putting on weight," she said.  "I didn't realise it myself until Jim
+told me I was getting fat."
+
+"That is a Jim-like touch," he returned, and glanced at her cursorily.
+"The grossness is not apparent to me.  Did you meet Sinclair during your
+stay?"
+
+"Yes," she said, and looked surprised that he should ask the question.
+That he had once been jealous of Sinclair was unknown to her.
+
+"And does he still wear the willow for your sake?"
+
+"He isn't married," she answered.  "But I don't think that has anything
+to do with me."
+
+She regretted that he had opened this subject.  The memory of Sinclair
+was a distress to her.  The change in him had struck her more forcibly
+than the change in any member of her own family.  The difference in him
+was not due alone to the passing years.  He was altered in manner as
+much as in appearance; all the boyish gaiety had departed: he was older,
+more thoughtful; the irresponsible gladness of youth, formerly so
+noticeable a characteristic of his, was missing.  She could have wept at
+the change in him.  He was still her devoted slave.  During her visit he
+had haunted her sister's house.  He had claimed the privilege of
+friendship and put himself at her disposal.  He was always at hand when
+she needed him.  And never once by word or gesture had he attempted to
+overstep the boundary of friendship.  She felt grateful to him for his
+consistent and considerate kindness.  She did not want to discuss him,
+even with Paul.
+
+Hallam did not pursue the subject.  He fell into silence and left her to
+do the talking.  During the remainder of the drive she chatted
+fragmentally and brightly of her doings while she had been away.
+Principally she talked about the children.  The sight of John and Mary,
+the sound of their gay young voices, their insistent claim upon the
+general attention, had brought home to her the absence of the one great
+interest in her own home.  She wanted children intensely; and it did not
+seem that her desire would ever be satisfied.  A child would have
+completed her married happiness.
+
+Something of what was in her thoughts she managed to convey to Hallam
+when they reached the house and entered together, her arm within his.
+Alone in the drawing-room, when he held her in his embrace and kissed
+the bright upturned face, she slipped her hands behind his neck and
+looked back at him with tender loving eyes.
+
+"Paul," she whispered, "I wish we had a child of our very own--a wee
+scrap of soft pink flesh, with tiny clinging hands.  My dear, my
+dearest, I do so want a child!"
+
+He gazed down at her, troubled and immeasurably surprised, and gently
+kissed the tremulous lips.  He had never given any thought to the matter
+until now, when he realised the aching mother-hunger expressed in her
+desire: she had concealed it so successfully hitherto.  He did not
+himself wish for children; the thought of them even was an
+embarrassment.  With clumsy tenderness he stroked her hair.
+
+"It seems as though it is not to be," he said.  "I didn't know you cared
+so much, sweetheart."
+
+"Don't you care?" she asked.  "I!"  He seemed surprised.  "I've got
+you," he said, and drew her close in his embrace.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE.
+
+The first real sorrow in Esme's life came to her with the realisation of
+the fact that her influence with her husband no longer sufficed to keep
+him steady.  Gradually, so gradually that she did not suspect it until
+the thing was plainly manifest, he fell back upon his former habit of
+intemperance and became once more the drunkard whom she had first met at
+the Zuurberg, and pitied and despised for the weakness of his character.
+
+Hallam did not give in to his vice without a struggle; but with each
+lapse his will weakened, till eventually he ceased to fight his enemy,
+ceased even to consider the pain which he was aware he caused his wife.
+
+Esme's grief was deep, and the humiliation of realising that the thing
+was becoming publicly known added to her distress.  Reluctantly she
+withdrew from social intercourse and devoted her time entirely to him,
+trusting that the power of love would yet prove the stronger influence.
+Her love for him strengthened with her recognition of his need of her:
+he was her child, weak and foolish and dependent,--her man and her
+child, whom she had to protect from himself.
+
+Matters grew worse.  An inkling of the trouble reached Rose through an
+acquaintance of her husband who had been in Cape Town and had heard
+rumours of the state of affairs.  Rose's first impulse was to write to
+her sister and ask for information direct; but on reflection she decided
+against this course.  There flashed into her mind, as once before at the
+time of Esme's marriage the same memory had disturbed her peace, the
+picture of George Sinclair's face when he heard of Esme's engagement and
+the recollection of his incomprehensible agitation.  Was it possible
+that he had known?
+
+She determined to ask him; and on the first opportunity did so,
+observing him attentively while she put a direct question to him.  The
+quick distress and the absence of surprise in his look confirmed her
+suspicion.  He had been aware of this thing all along.
+
+"You knew!" she said resentfully.  "Why didn't you tell me?"
+
+"Good lord!" he exclaimed almost passionately.  "It wasn't for me to say
+anything.  She knew what she was taking on.  It wouldn't have made a
+fraction of difference if you had done everything in your power to
+dissuade her.  She went into it with her eyes open."
+
+"You mean that she realised she was marrying a drunkard?"
+
+"Of course she realised it.  I suppose she believed she could reclaim
+him.  For a time no doubt she did.  Mrs Bainbridge, I could cheerfully
+kill him, if that would help matters."
+
+"It wouldn't," Rose answered practically.  "Don't talk like a fool,
+George."
+
+"I love her," he said simply, the tears welling in his eyes.  "I hate to
+think of her life with him.  It cuts me."
+
+"Dear old boy," she said, with greater gentleness of manner than she
+often displayed, "I know.  I wish from my soul that she had married you.
+I always mistrusted Paul.  But she was fascinated with him; there was
+no one else in the picture for her.  He may break her heart and spoil
+her life, but she'll go on loving him.  You could see for yourself when
+she was round here; she was restless without him and wanting to go
+home."
+
+"That's not surprising in the circumstances," he returned with
+bitterness.  "I don't suppose that she trusts him out of her sight for
+long."
+
+"That wasn't it," Rose said quietly; and added after a brief pause: "She
+just wanted him."
+
+It was better, she decided, that he should face matters and give over
+cherishing a hopeless attachment.  She liked George Sinclair
+sufficiently to wish to see him happily married and settled down.  He
+was a man who would make an admirable husband.
+
+But Sinclair showed no inclination towards marriage.  He had met the
+girl he wanted, and lost her; no other girl could blot out the memory of
+his first real love, nor take her place in his heart.  It had been a big
+blow when she married; and the bitterness of his disappointment
+increased enormously with the knowledge of the disaster which threatened
+her happiness.  In a measure he had expected it; it did not come as a
+surprise, only as an ugly confirmation of his fears.  He believed that
+he could have borne his own disappointment philosophically had life gone
+well for her: but the conviction that she had made a mistake held with
+him and inflamed his resentment against Hallam.
+
+"Well, there's one thing," he said, as he got up from his seat and
+confronted Rose with grim set face, "if he goes on at the rate he did
+when he was at the Zuurberg she will be a widow before many years.  A
+man can't fool with his constitution like that--not in this country
+anyhow."
+
+"Don't count on that, George," she advised.  "It's a slow poison."
+
+He laughed shortly.
+
+"I've a feeling that my turn will come," he said, and turned about
+abruptly and left the room, left the house, with a sore heart, and his
+sense of exasperation deepening as he thought of the girl he loved tied
+to a drunkard who was not man enough to conquer his particular vice.
+
+And the girl he pitied was blaming herself for not having gone with her
+man into the wilds, for not having allowed him to follow the life he
+preferred, hunting and exploring along the unbeaten track.  Had life
+offered him a sufficient interest this relapse might have been averted.
+She had relied overmuch on the strength of character which she believed
+was his: she had overestimated his strength, had left him to fight his
+battle unaided.  He had wearied of the struggle and given in.  From the
+point where he wearied she took it up, took it up with a tireless
+determination to win, that armed itself against all disappointments and
+rebuffs; and the rebuffs were many.  Hallam resented her attempts at
+coercion.
+
+Oddly, he did not mind her knowing of his weakness, but he objected when
+she allowed her knowledge to become obvious.  He felt that she ought to
+have ignored this thing; to embarrass him by thrusting it under his
+notice was tactless and annoying.
+
+He shut himself away from her more than formerly, and sat up late into
+the night reading in his study.  Occasionally he fell asleep in his
+chair and remained there until the morning, to wake cramped and
+unrefreshed and creep upstairs in the dawn.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR.
+
+These late hours, and the fact that he had taken to sleeping in the
+dressing-room from a desire not to disturb her, excited Esme's worst
+apprehensions.  She fell into the habit of lying awake and listening for
+him: she could not rest while she knew that he was downstairs.  The old
+sickening sensation of terror, which had seized her at the Zuurberg when
+she listened to him stumbling along the stoep on his way to his room,
+gripped her anew each time that she heard him mount the stairs and go
+unsteadily to the dressing-room in his stockinged feet.
+
+The horror of it was as a nightmare which tormented her unceasingly.
+She was afraid of him when he had been drinking heavily; not afraid that
+he would do her any physical injury; but the look in his eyes terrified
+her; it seemed to alter him, to make him a stranger almost.  There were
+times when he passed her on the stairs or landing with wide-opened eyes
+which appeared not to notice her presence: the sight of him thus made
+her knees shake under her and blanched her face.  It was like meeting a
+sleep-walker, only more horrible.
+
+She went to him one night in his study and kneeled on the carpet beside
+him and pleaded with him.
+
+"Paul," she said, and lifted sweet, distressed eyes to his, with no
+reproach in their look, only a great sadness.  "Aren't you neglecting me
+a little?  Why do you shut yourself away every night?  I'm lonely all by
+myself."
+
+"I thought you were in bed," he said, and moved restlessly and avoided
+her gaze.  "You usually go to bed at ten o'clock."
+
+"Not lately," she answered.  "I sit up and wait for you.  I think to
+myself, he may need me.  I am always hoping against hope.  My dear, why
+do you shut yourself away from me?  It's unkind.  Paul, don't you love
+me any longer?"
+
+He brought his eyes back to her face, and looked at her long and
+earnestly.  Then he put his hands on her shoulders and held her a little
+way off, still scrutinising her attentively.
+
+"Do you think it necessary to ask that?" he said.
+
+"Yes," she answered almost passionately.  She put her hands over his and
+clung to him desperately, exerting all her control to keep back the
+rising tears.  "Once our love sufficed, dearest heart; you wanted only
+to be with me; and now--"
+
+"Aren't you being a little foolish?" he asked.  "People who live
+together develop a sort of independence of each other after a while.
+Because I like to be quiet for an hour or two during the evening, need
+that be construed into a sign of indifference?"
+
+"No," she said; "not that in itself.  But my love is not strong enough
+any longer to hold you.  You've slipped back into the old ways, dear.
+It's breaking my heart, Paul; I can't bear it."
+
+She dropped her face on to his knees and wept bitterly, with her eyes
+hidden in her hands.  His own hand, shaky and uncertain, came to rest on
+her hair, stroked her hair gently.
+
+"I'm a brute," he said, "an inconsiderate brute."  He gathered her in
+his arms and drew her up and held her, weeping still, upon his knee.
+"Don't cry.  Tell me what you want.  I'll try, Esme.  I didn't think it
+was so bad as this.  I'll pull myself together.  Don't cry, sweetheart.
+It distresses me to see you cry.  The brute I've been!"
+
+He drew her wet cheek to his and kissed her, and she wound her arms
+about his neck and clung to him, sobbing softly, with her head resting
+like a tired child's on his shoulder.
+
+When the sounds of her sobs ceased he got up and left the room with her
+and went with her upstairs.  For that night she had won a victory.  But
+she did not feel sure any longer that her influence would hold.  He had
+made her promises before and broken them again.  It seemed to her that
+his will had weakened considerably: she no longer felt any real
+confidence in him.
+
+Perhaps she allowed him to see this, and so lost much of her hold on
+him.  He was conscious always that she watched him; and his manner
+became furtive and suspicious as a result of this supervision.  His
+moods of repentance did not endure for long; but while they lasted his
+hatred of himself for the distress he caused the wife whom he still
+tenderly loved was genuine and deep.  It was as though his life were
+accursed and the curse of his misfortune overshadowed her.
+
+It amazed Hallam and disconcerted him enormously when he began to
+realise that he had lost his grip on himself.  He had imagined that he
+had conquered his vice, that he could keep it under without particular
+effort.  He had believed in himself with an even greater confidence than
+Esme had once believed in him: he had relied, with an almost arrogant
+faith in the power of the human will, on his unaided effort to control
+his desires.  At the time of his marriage he had felt quite sure of
+himself; otherwise he would never have injured the girl he loved by
+linking her lot with his.  He felt as though he had been guilty of a
+breach of faith with her; and this thought worried him unceasingly, till
+he drugged his mind into temporary oblivion and laid up thereby further
+torment for his sober hours.
+
+The state of things became unendurable, and finally worked to a climax.
+
+A few weeks of restraint on Hallam's part, of determined and difficult
+self-discipline, and then his devil got the upper hand once more, and
+his resolves faded into nothingness before the craving which he could no
+longer resist.
+
+He fought the demon of desire for a few days with a fierce despair in
+the knowledge that the thing was too strong for him.  With each battle
+his strength weakened.  Realising this he sought diversion, taking Esme
+out in the evenings to any entertainment that offered.  He feared to be
+alone.  When he was alone his craving for drink was insistent.
+
+And then one fateful night he gave way to his desire, deliberately and
+without further struggle: he flung his scruples aside and relaxed all
+effort, as an exhausted swimmer might relax and give up with the shore
+and safety in sight.
+
+He had been with Esme to the theatre.  The performance had been poor,
+both in regard to acting and to plot: he had felt extremely bored.  And
+Esme was tired, and complained of headache.  It had been a boisterous
+day, with a black south-easter raging.  The wind gathered force towards
+evening and blew to a gale, driving the dust before it in swirling
+clouds of sticky grit.  Small stones rattled against the closed windows
+of the taxi in which they drove; the cushions felt damp and sticky, and
+the dust penetrated through the cracks.
+
+"What a night to be abroad in!"  Hallam said, and observed his wife's
+pale face with some concern.  "You ought not to have come.  It was a
+silly sort of show, and it's made your head worse.  You should have
+stayed at home and rested."
+
+"I'm all right," she answered brightly; and made an effort to be
+entertaining during the long drive home.  She did not like him to feel
+bored when he took her out.
+
+But her head ached badly; and she was relieved when the taxi stopped
+before the house, and Hallam got out and opened the door for her and
+followed her into the lighted hall.  It was good to get inside and shut
+out the inclement night.  The rush of the wind sweeping round the side
+of the house was terrific.  She stood for a moment at the foot of the
+stairs and listened to it, with her temples throbbing painfully and her
+nerves jarred with the noise of the warring elements.  Hallam shut the
+front door and bolted it.  When he turned round he saw her eyes,
+dark-ringed in her white face, looking at him gravely with a question in
+them.
+
+"You get off to bed," he said.  "I'll lock up and follow you in a few
+minutes.  You look done."
+
+"It's this stupid headache," she said apologetically.  "Paul, you won't
+be late?  The wind makes me nervous."
+
+"Brave person!" he returned, smiling at her indulgently.  He removed the
+wrap from her shoulders and threw it over his arm.  "I will be up before
+you are asleep."
+
+He watched her mount the stairs.  When she reached the landing she
+paused to smile down at him before entering her room.  He turned away
+and went into his study, switching on the light as he entered.  He
+became aware that he was still carrying his wife's wrap, and placed the
+flimsy thing over the back of a chair, and stood hesitating, looking
+towards his easy chair, with the table beside it littered with books and
+the reading-lamp in the centre.  He touched the switch of the lamp and
+turned off the brighter light and remained, still in indecision, looking
+no longer at the chair but beyond it towards a cupboard, the key of
+which he carried always upon him.  He felt in his pocket for the key,
+and remained staring at it in his hand and reflecting deeply.  His devil
+tempted him sorely.  Against his volition his gaze travelled to the
+flimsy thing of gauze and fur which lay as a mute reminder of his wife
+where he had dropped it on entering, and in imagination he heard again
+the plaintive note of her question: "Paul, you won't be late?" as she
+had turned and looked back at him from the stairs.  He had promised to
+follow her shortly.
+
+Frowning, he turned the key in his hand.  For a while he remained still
+irresolute while his will slowly weakened and his craving increased;
+then with an abrupt movement he advanced swiftly and, stooping, inserted
+the key in the cupboard door.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.
+
+Midnight struck and still the wind raged without, while inside the house
+complete silence reigned.  One o'clock struck.  The gale was at its
+height; the noise of the wind was terrific: it swept past the lighted
+window of Hallam's study and shook the glass as though something alive
+were out in the storm and seeking refuge from the fury of the wind.  But
+the occupant of the room neither stirred nor looked round: he sat with a
+book open on the table before him, and a glass at his elbow towards
+which his shaking hand reached forth at regular and frequent intervals.
+He had forgotten his promise to his wife, had forgotten the hour; he sat
+in a semi-stupor, and took no heed of time or place.  Whether he read,
+and, if he did read, whether his drugged brain took hold of the sense of
+the printed matter on which his eyes rested, was uncertain; but every
+now and again he turned a page of the book without raising his glance
+even when his hand reached out for the glass from which he drank: he
+only looked up to refill the glass from a decanter on the table.
+
+The minutes ticked on relentlessly, and the clock on the mantelpiece
+chimed the half-hour after one.  A light footfall descending the stairs,
+so light that it could not be heard above the noise of the wind, did not
+disturb the reader; nor did he appear to see when the door of the room
+was pushed wider and Esme with a dressing-gown worn over her nightdress
+and her hair in a heavy plait over her shoulder, stood framed in the
+doorway, a shrinking slender figure, looking towards him with wide,
+anguished eyes.  She advanced swiftly and stood beside him and rested a
+hand on his shoulder.
+
+"Paul!" she said.
+
+He looked up at her slowly, stupidly, his dull eyes scrutinising her, a
+frown contracting his brows: then his gaze travelled to the hand on his
+shoulder and stayed there.  He moved his shoulder impatiently.
+
+"What's the matter?" he said in thickened tones.  "I thought you were
+asleep."
+
+"You promised that you would not be long," she said.  "I waited for you.
+Come to bed, Paul; it's late."
+
+"I shan't be long," he muttered.  "You'll take cold."  He stared at her
+deshabille.  "Don't be silly, Esme; go back to bed."
+
+"Dear."  She put her hand under his arm and attempted to raise him.
+"Come with me.  I am afraid."
+
+She looked frightened; her face was blanched and tense; her whole body
+trembled.  He stared at her, amazed.  Then clumsily he got on to his
+feet and stood unsteadily before her, assisted by her supporting hand.
+Slowly she led him towards the door.  He appeared reluctant to go with
+her; and at the door he halted irresolutely and attempted, without
+success, to free himself from her hold.  Her grasp on his arm tightened.
+
+"Come with me," she urged.
+
+"I've never known you to be so foolish before," he said.  "Why should a
+little wind make you nervous?  It blows hard often enough to have
+accustomed you to it."
+
+"I don't feel well, Paul," she pleaded.  "I want you with me."
+
+She drew him on towards the stairs.  He took hold of the banister and
+mounted, stumbling, and kicking against each stair in his progress.  She
+got him as far as the landing; but when she strove to draw him on
+towards the bedroom he resisted.
+
+"You go on," he said.  "I must go down and switch off the lights?"
+
+"Never mind the lights," she urged.  "Come with me, dear."
+
+"I must go down," he repeated with irritable obstinacy.  "I won't be a
+minute.  Go on, and get into bed.  I'll be up in a minute."
+
+"No," she persisted, and got between him and the stairs, and put out a
+hand to hinder his descent.  "Stay with me, Paul, I don't want you to go
+down again."
+
+With darkening looks, and anger kindling in his resentful eyes, he
+endeavoured to push past her.  He shook off her hold roughly, and made a
+clumsy movement forward, lurching against her heavily, with a force and
+suddenness which caused her to overbalance.  She threw out a hand wildly
+to catch at the rail, missed it, and fell headlong down the stairs,
+landing with a crash upon the floor of the hall, where she lay, an inert
+and crumpled figure, with white upturned face showing deathlike in the
+artificial light.
+
+Hallam swayed forward dizzily and clutched at the rail and leaned
+against it heavily.
+
+"My God!" he muttered, and hid his eyes from the sight of the still
+white face.
+
+There came the sound of doors opening behind him.  He pulled himself
+together quickly, and stumbled down the stairs, and knelt on the floor
+beside his wife.  The frightened faces of the servants peered at him
+from the landing.  He did not look up: he was stroking his wife's hand
+and speaking to her softly and weeping.  His tears splashed upon her
+hand and upon his own hand; they fell warm and wet: something else warm
+and wet touched his hand.  Abruptly he became aware of a dark stain
+under Esme's head; it oozed slowly, and spread darkly over the polished
+floor.  She was bleeding.  That had to be stopped anyway.
+
+The shock of the accident had sobered him; the cloud cleared away from
+his brain and he was able to think.  Quickly he went to the telephone,
+hunted up a number and rang up the doctor.  When he was satisfied that
+help would arrive speedily he returned to his post beside the
+unconscious figure of his wife, and slipped a pillow, which one of the
+servants fetched at his bidding, under her head.  He moved her with
+infinite care.  He would have lifted her and carried her upstairs, but
+he dared not trust himself with this task which in his sober moments he
+could have accomplished with the utmost ease.  He sat beside her,
+holding her hand and crying uncontrollably, until the doctor arrived and
+took over the direction of affairs.
+
+Hallam, stricken with remorse, shaken, and dazed with grief, wandered
+aimlessly between his study and the landing, and stood outside the
+bedroom door, which he dared not open, waiting in a terrible suspense
+for information of his wife's condition.
+
+A nurse appeared upon the scene.  He did not know how she came there; he
+did not know who admitted her.  He heard the subdued noise of her
+arrival, and later met her on the stairs, a quiet-eyed,
+resourceful-looking woman, who watched him with interested curiosity as
+he passed her and went down and shut himself in his study once more.  In
+the cold light of the dawn the house seemed alive with movement, the
+stealthy rustling of people coming and going on tiptoe, and the
+occasional murmur of voices speaking in undertones.
+
+After what appeared to Hallam an interminable time the doctor came
+downstairs.  He accompanied Hallam into the study and sat down opposite
+to him and looked with keen, understanding eyes into the haggard face of
+the man whose agony of mind was written indelibly on every line of the
+strongly marked features.  Hallam's only question was: "Win she live?"
+
+"Oh, yes."
+
+The relief of this assurance was so tremendous that he scarcely took in
+anything else that was said.  The doctor outlined the injuries.  A
+fractured base was the most serious of these.  He asked permission to
+remove the patient to a nursing-home.  The case required skilled
+nursing; it was a matter of time and care; absolute quiet and freedom
+from worry were essential.  The removal could be accomplished that
+morning, if he were agreeable.  Hallam nodded.
+
+"I leave everything in your hands," he said.  "You know best."
+
+He felt suddenly very tired.  The strain of anxiety and his long night
+vigil began to tell.  The doctor eyed him keenly, advised food and rest,
+and then rose and went out to his car.  Hallam closed the front door
+after him, and turned towards the stairs which he climbed wearily.
+
+Outside the door of Esme's room he halted to listen.  There was no sound
+from within.  The nurse was in charge he knew.  He had no thought of
+entering; he did not desire to enter.  He shrank from the idea of
+looking upon his wife's face: the memory of her face, still and white,
+with the dark fringes of her closed eyes resting on the deathlike pallor
+of her cheeks, haunted him; it would haunt him, he believed, all his
+life.
+
+While he stood there outside her door, in the faint light that was
+creeping in wanly as the dawn advanced, he resolved that her life should
+no longer be darkened with his presence: he would go away somewhere--
+anywhere,--he would become lost to the world until such time as he could
+feel certain that the curse which was ruining their married happiness
+was conquered finally and for ever.  Never again should the horror of it
+cloud her peace.
+
+With head sunk on his breast he turned away from the door and went into
+his dressing-room and threw himself, dressed as he was, upon the bed.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.
+
+Following the departure of his wife in an ambulance, Hallam made his own
+preparations for leaving home for an indefinite time.  He purposed going
+into the interior.  He wanted to be alone, away from the influences of
+civilisation and the sight of European faces, away from the memory of
+the past and the nightmare of recent events.
+
+Great mental anguish, particularly anguish which is accompanied by
+remorse, tends to a morbid condition of mind which renders the
+individual liable to act in a manner altogether unusual.  Hallam made
+his preparations as a man might do who leaves his home with no thought
+of ever returning.  He left quite definite and detailed instructions
+with his solicitor, and a letter for his wife, which was only to be
+given to her when she was strong enough to receive communications of a
+startling nature.  In his letter he informed her that he had left her
+until such time as he could with confidence feel that he would never
+again cause her such distress as he had done in the past.  He wrote with
+restraint but with very deep feeling of his undying love for her and of
+his remorse for what had happened, and ended by bidding her keep a brave
+heart and carry on until his return.
+
+He posted this letter, with instructions as to its delivery, under cover
+to his lawyer, and completed his personal arrangements, and left by the
+train going north.
+
+He had no clear idea as to his destination at the time of entraining;
+his one thought was to get as far away from civilisation as possible: he
+intended to make for the Congo.  Besides a light kit, he was provided
+with sufficient money and his gun, which he carried in its case.  The
+undertaking was adventurous; but it was in no spirit of adventure that
+he started; his heart was heavy and his mind clouded and depressed,
+preoccupied with thoughts of Esme lying ill and alone in a
+nursing-home--too ill to concern herself about him for the present; but
+later he knew she would ask for him and wonder why he did not come.
+That could not be avoided: she would grow reconciled to his absence, and
+she would get well quicker without him to worry about.
+
+Hallam had secured a compartment to himself, a fact which gave him
+immense satisfaction.  He leaned with his arms on the window and
+surveyed the lively scene on the platform in gloomy abstraction in the
+interval before the train started.  Other passengers leaned from the
+windows also for a few last words with friends who were seeing them off.
+But Hallam spoke to no one, and no one paid any attention to the
+solitary man looking from his compartment on the animated scene below.
+Doors slammed noisily, and the guard raised his flag, and instantly
+lowered it again as, amid a confusion of bustle and excitement, two
+belated travellers arrived and were bundled unceremoniously into the
+carriage next to Hallam's.  Their baggage was flung in through the
+windows after them.  Then the whistle sounded and the train moved slowly
+out of the station.
+
+Disturbed and singularly annoyed, Hallam drew back and sat down in the
+corner seat.  The people whose tardy arrival had delayed the start by a
+couple of minutes were the Garfields.  He had recognised them instantly;
+he believed that they had seen and recognised him.  He felt oddly
+irritated.  Had his flight been a criminal proceeding and the secrecy of
+his movements imperative, he could not have been more discomposed by the
+knowledge that these people, who were friends of his wife and with whom
+he was acquainted, were in the next compartment to his.  He would
+probably encounter them later, almost certainly they would meet in the
+restaurant-car.  They would regard it in the light of a social
+obligation to inquire for his wife.  Mrs Garfield had already called
+both at the house and at the nursing-home for news of Esme.  He had not
+seen her; he shrank from the thought of seeing her; but he knew that he
+would be compelled to face her sooner or later.  She was one of the few
+people whose persistent friendship for his wife refused to be dismayed
+by an absence of response.  She understood Esme's difficulties, and
+sympathised with and admired her tremendously.
+
+The news of the accident, which no one associated with Hallam, had
+genuinely distressed her.  If by her presence she could have been of
+service during Esme's illness she would have put off her journey to the
+Falls; but her visit to the nursing-home had convinced her that Esme was
+not in a condition to need any one; she might be of some use later
+during the period of convalescence.
+
+Her surprise at seeing Hallam on the train was great.  That he should be
+leaving Cape Town then occurred to her as little short of amazing.
+While her husband was engaged in stowing their baggage away on the racks
+she asked him if he had noticed who was in the next compartment to
+theirs.  Apparently he had.  He looked down at her and nodded.
+
+"Odd chap?" he said.  "Most men would prefer to remain on the spot, even
+if their presence wasn't actually needed."
+
+"The journey may be a matter of necessity," she said.
+
+"It may be, of course."  He lifted the last bag up to the rack and sat
+down opposite to her and unrolled a bundle of papers.  "We ran it rather
+fine, old girl.  The next time I take you on a holiday I hope you'll get
+forrader with your preparations."
+
+"You old Adam, you!" she said, smiling, and leaned forward to pat his
+knee.
+
+And the man in the next compartment sat and smoked and meditated
+gloomily, while the train ran on through fertile grass-veld towards the
+mountains and the sterile plain which lay beyond them.
+
+In the vexation of seeing people he knew on the train, Hallam's first
+thought had been to leave it at a convenient stopping place and wait for
+the next train and so resume his journey; but on reflection this idea
+seemed a little absurd.  Of what interest could his movements possibly
+be to the Garfields?  They would leave the train in all probability long
+before he did, and the greatest inconvenience their presence would cause
+him would be an occasional and brief encounter.
+
+The first encounter occurred very speedily: Mr Garfield came to his
+compartment and stood in the corridor and inquired after his wife.  He
+expressed much sympathy with Hallam.
+
+"We were shocked," he said, "when we heard.  My wife called at the
+nursing-home, but she wasn't allowed to see Mrs Hallam.  I trust she is
+doing well?"
+
+"The doctor tells me so," Hallam answered, with what the other man
+considered a curious lack of feeling.  "She is too ill at present to see
+any one."
+
+The talk hung for a while.  Mr Garfield, who never felt at his ease
+with Hallam, was none the less profoundly sorry for the man.  He
+believed that the callous manner was assumed to cloak his real feelings.
+The haggard face and sombre eyes betokened considerable mental anguish.
+
+"It is rather an awkward time for you to have to get away," he ventured.
+
+"It is."  Hallam's tone became more constrained.  He moved restlessly,
+and looked beyond the speaker out at the changing scenery.  "But at
+least I can't help by remaining," he added.  Abruptly he brought his
+gaze back again and looked steadily into the other's eyes with an
+expression that was faintly apologetic.  "I haven't recovered from the
+shock yet," he said.  "I'm worried."
+
+Garfield nodded sympathetically.
+
+"My dear fellow, of course.  It's not surprising that you should be.  If
+we can do anything, let us know.  And if you want a chat come along to
+our compartment; we're only next door.  I'm taking the wife to the
+Falls.  It's her first visit.  I expect we'll put in about a couple of
+weeks there.  Do you go as far?"
+
+"I'm going farther," Hallam answered briefly.  But, although Garfield
+looked inquiry, he did not give him any more definite information in
+regard to his destination.
+
+Hallam had started on his journey with no thought of deserting his wife
+and leaving his home for ever: he had come away simply because he felt
+the imperative necessity for change and solitude.  The man's mind was
+dark with despair.  This feeling of despair deepened with every passing
+hour.  Fear held him in its grip.  He mistrusted himself.  The horror of
+what had happened haunted him night and day; he could not sleep for
+thinking of it.  Always before his mind's eye was the picture of his
+wife--falling--falling headlong--striking the ground with a thud--lying
+still and white at the foot of the stairs, with the dark stain under her
+head slowly spreading on the darker wood of the floor...
+
+How had this thing happened?  How had he come to lose control of himself
+completely?  He ought not to have married her.  He had done her an
+irreparable injury by tying her life to his...
+
+Throughout the long hot days he sat in his compartment and brooded, and
+when the gold merged with the evening purple, and the purple deepened to
+night, he stretched himself on his bunk, and lay looking out at the
+star-strewn sky through the unshuttered windows, and brooded still with
+a mind too distraught to rest.
+
+He believed that some brain sickness was coming upon him; he felt
+wretchedly ill; and from the way in which people stared at him when he
+entered the dining-car he judged that his appearance evidenced his
+physical and mental debility.  Although he forced himself to go to meals
+he ate little; he had no appetite for food; the smell and the sight of
+it nauseated him.
+
+He began to think that he would be compelled to leave the train: the
+confined space and the heat were making him ill.  He found himself
+falling into the habit of talking to himself.  This development
+horrified him no more than it horrified Mrs Garfield, who overheard
+him, and communicated her fear to her husband that Hallam was mad.  His
+proximity made her nervous.  She lay awake the greater part of one night
+listening to his mutterings, and fell asleep with the dawn and slept
+heavily until breakfast time.  It came as a great relief to her to
+discover later that Hallam had left the train in the early morning.
+
+He had alighted at a wayside halt, moved by an inexplicable impulse too
+strong to resist.  Dread of another long day, of another sleepless night
+on the train, had been the ruling motive.  He felt that if he did not
+get out and walk he would be ill.  He was on the verge of a collapse,
+and in no condition of mind to realise the foolishness of alighting in
+this barren waste, with no prospect of shelter or refreshment within
+view.  There must be farms somewhere in the neighbourhood, he judged, or
+at least a native hut where he could procure all he needed.  For the
+moment he required only to walk in the pure air, to exert his muscles,
+and rid himself of the intolerable strain on his overcharged nerves.
+Something had seemed to snap in his brain during the night.  He found it
+increasingly difficult to concentrate his attention on anything for
+long.  But the idea that he must walk obsessed him; and, with his
+gun-case in hand and his kit across his shoulders, he struck across the
+veld, turning his back on the permanent way.
+
+It did not greatly matter which direction he took; he had no particular
+objective in view: he wanted chiefly to shake off this annoying sense of
+unfitness.  He had never been ill in his life before: he did not
+understand it.  It had seemed to him that if he could walk he would be
+all right, and instead he felt worse.  He was giddy, and he could not
+make any pace.  He took a bush for a landmark and noted how long he was
+in reaching it.  It amazed him.  He became angrily impatient with his
+own laggard steps: he wasn't walking, he was crawling--crawling like a
+sick animal, with a sick animal's instinct to find some hole to creep
+into.
+
+He looked about him vaguely, with tired eyes.  That was what he wanted,
+all he wanted,--some quiet shelter into which to crawl and rest.
+
+He stumbled on, tripping over the dry scrub, lurching heavily like a
+drunken man, and clinging tightly to his gun-case, as to something from
+which he would not be separated, though the weight of it was too great
+for his failing strength.  Twice he came to his knees; but each time he
+rose again and stumbled blindly on as before.
+
+The sun rose higher in the heavens.  It poured its warmth like some
+molten stream upon the gaping ground.  For miles around the veld
+stretched in unbroken sameness, blackened from the long drought, sparse
+and scrubby, with never a sign of any living thing, save the solitary
+man's figure, moving slowly, with heavy uncertain gait, in quest of some
+temporary shelter from the sun's burning rays.
+
+It seemed to Hallam that he walked many miles and for many hours before,
+a long way off like some wonderful oasis amid the arid waste, he
+descried signs of water, and the wooded banks of a river which meandered
+like a green irregular wall across the stark nakedness of the land.  The
+sight of this unexpected fertility gave him fresh heart and stimulated
+his failing energies to further effort.  By sheer force of will he
+dragged his lagging feet over the uneven ground.  He desired only to
+reach the river and lie down beside it and rest.  He longed simply to
+get to the water, to feel it, to lave his burning brow in its coolness,
+to moisten his parched lips.
+
+Again he fell, and again he rose and staggered on, covering the
+intervening space painfully and slowly.  When he was quite close to the
+bank he fell once more, and this time he failed to rise, despite his
+persistent efforts.  For the first time his hold on his gun-case
+relaxed.  He stared at it regretfully; but he knew that he was powerless
+to drag it further.  He left it lying where it was, and crawled on his
+hands and knees painfully towards the bushes, crawled between them, and
+reached the shallow river which had been his goal.
+
+Book 3--CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.
+
+Esme's accident, and the contemporaneous and mysterious disappearance of
+Hallam, brought Rose in haste and at great personal inconvenience round
+to Cape Town.  She was terribly worried about her sister, and enormously
+concerned at Hallam's departure at a time when it seemed to her his
+presence was urgently needed.
+
+Her concern deepened as the days passed, the weeks passed, and still
+there was no word from him, no news of his whereabouts.  The information
+which the Garfields furnished on their return gave a sinister aspect to
+the look of things.  And Esme as she got better was continually asking
+for her husband.  She fretted at his absence; and when ultimately she
+was allowed to have the letter he had left for her, though she ceased to
+ask for him, she fretted more than before.
+
+The contents of the letter, which she refused to allow any one else to
+read, upset her greatly.  It elucidated nothing of the mystery of his
+complete disappearance, but merely informed her that he had gone away
+for an indefinite time.  She felt assured from her knowledge of him that
+he would never return until he was master of himself.
+
+Her heart was nigh to breaking with her longing for him, and with pity,
+pity for the suffering which she knew he was enduring: his agony of mind
+must be terrible.  She wanted to see him, to put her arms about him and
+bid him think no more of what was past.  It was grievous to her to think
+of him alone with heart and mind heavy with sorrow and remorse.  If only
+she could be with him she would help him to forget.  The injury to
+herself seemed to her so small a part of the trouble; it was so entirely
+accidental: largely her own carelessness was responsible for her fall;
+if she had been on her guard it need not have happened.  She believed
+that if she could talk to him she could make him see this.  She wanted
+to help him, to comfort him.  And she wanted him beside her, wanted his
+love, his presence, with a feverish urgency that burned like a fever in
+her veins, and left her sick with unsatisfied longing as the days
+dragged by without bringing him, without bringing news of him even.  If
+he had died he could not have vanished more completely out of her life.
+
+Her sister urged her to return with her to the Bay until she was
+stronger and more fitted to be alone; but Esme preferred to remain in
+her own home.
+
+"Any day he may return," she said.  "I would not like him to come back
+and find me gone."
+
+"He would understand," Rose said sensibly.  "At least he would know
+where to look for you."
+
+She did not herself believe that her brother-in-law would return.  The
+whole affair was to her mysterious and inexplicable.
+
+"Did you quarrel with Paul?" she asked bluntly.
+
+Esme lifted astonished eyes to the questioner's face.
+
+"Quarrel!" she repeated, aghast at the mere suggestion, and too
+genuinely surprised to leave any doubt as to the amicable conditions of
+her relations with her husband in Rose's mind.  "Paul and I never
+quarrelled over anything."
+
+"Then it's a pity you didn't," Rose replied practically.  "It lets off
+steam.  You know, my dear," she added, and passed a caressing arm round
+Esme's shoulders, "your husband possesses a very complex nature.  Judged
+from the ordinary standpoint, it's an outrageous thing for him to go
+away like this; in the circumstances it is even cruel.  Don't you think
+it would be good for him when he returned to find that you had gone back
+to your own people?--that you were not content to sit at home and wait
+for him?  I'd show more spirit, Esme.  A man like Paul is apt to become
+neglectful without intending it.  He should be made to think.  You ought
+not to be alone until you are strong again."
+
+"I should like him to find his home open," Esme answered, "and a welcome
+waiting for him when he comes back."
+
+There was no doubt in her own mind that one day he would come back.  She
+believed that he would walk in unexpectedly, quite suddenly as he had
+gone; and she would feel his strong arms round her, and in their shelter
+forget all the sorrow and perplexity of their separation.  That belief
+buoyed her up and gave her courage to wait.  She would not desert her
+post while he was absent working out his salvation in his own way.
+
+Rose left her and went back to her home, and so imbued Jim with her
+doubts that he sought advice on the matter, and eventually instigated a
+search for Hallam, who was not, in his opinion, responsible for his
+actions.
+
+Hallam's disappearance seemed as complete as if he had vanished off the
+face of the earth.  For months his whereabouts baffled all inquiries.
+People referred to him in the past tense as they might refer to a man
+who is dead.  Generally it was believed that he was dead.  From the
+point where he left the train nothing was known of his movements: no one
+appeared to have seen him after that; no one in the district, which
+consisted of a few scattered farms, had heard of or seen any stranger;
+if he had passed through their land he had not made his presence known.
+It was thought to be unlikely that he had remained in the district.
+Possibly he had changed his mind and taken again to the train.
+
+This theory gained credence when later the body of a man, answering to
+Hallam's description, was discovered in a lonely spot a day's journey
+from the halt where he had left the train.  There was nothing to show
+how the man had met his death, and, owing to the state of the body,
+recognition of the features was impossible; but the clothes were the
+clothes which Hallam had been wearing, and in the pockets were letters
+addressed to Hallam, and the watch which had been a present to him from
+his wife.  The facts seemed to point conclusively to this being the
+missing man; otherwise how came he to be wearing Hallam's clothes, and
+where was the owner?  Had Hallam been alive he would assuredly have come
+forward to refute the finding at the inquest on the dead man, whose
+identity could only be established by his garments and the papers
+discovered on him.
+
+There was no doubt in Jim Bainbridge's mind, when he viewed the body,
+that it was that of Paul Hallam; and, although for a long while Esme
+refused to believe that her husband was dead, the hope which she
+cherished of his being alive was a forlorn hope, which faded with the
+passing of time into a reluctant acceptance of the general belief.
+
+It was during the period of uncertainty, when her mind still obstinately
+rejected the evidence of her husband's death, that Esme decided to give
+up her house in Cape Town and move to Port Elizabeth in order to be near
+her sister.  She felt too nervous and unstrung to remain alone in a
+place where her only intimate friends were the Garfields; she wanted to
+be nearer her own people.  To the infinite satisfaction of John and
+Mary, she took a house, with a good garden attached, in Park Drive, and
+brought her furniture round with the definite intention of making her
+home there.
+
+Promptly with her arrival John packed his suit-case and invited himself
+to stay with her.  He could, he informed her, be of considerable use to
+her in the business of settling in.  John at the age of twelve was quite
+a man of the world.  In her loneliness she was glad of his company.
+This young kinsman of hers was the most tactful member of her family.
+He never distressed her with references to his uncle; he took his
+disappearance as a matter of course, very much as he had taken his
+marriage with his aunt.  These things were incidental, and a little
+surprising: they were episodes in the pleasant business of life.  Since
+the loss of his uncle had brought his aunt back he was less concerned
+about it than he otherwise would have been.
+
+He found it interesting to assist in moving in, to take over the
+direction and arrangement of everything.  It needed a man to do that.
+
+"Dad's getting old," he informed Esme, when he took up his residence
+with her.  "But you can always count on me when you want a man about."
+
+"That's very nice of you, John," she said.  "You are a great help to
+me."
+
+He came to her one day in the garden, carrying a leggy retriever pup,
+which he thrust into her arms with an air of magnificent generosity.
+
+"I got a dog for you," he explained.  "You must have a watch-dog, you
+know.  George gave me the pick of his litter.  When I told him I wanted
+it for you, he let me have his best pup."
+
+"Oh!" she cried quickly, and put the little beast down and stooped to
+pat it.  "It's sweet; but you must keep it.  I won't take your pup."
+
+"We'll share it," John returned magnanimously.  "It will stay here.  I
+expect I'll run up most days to see it."  He fondled the puppy lovingly.
+"Isn't he a beauty?  He's called Regret."
+
+"Regret!" she repeated slowly.  "I don't think I like that name for a
+dog.  Let us change it, shall we?"
+
+"I thought it a silly sort of name myself," John replied.  "But George
+named it.  Perhaps he wouldn't like it changed.  We can cut it down to
+Gret."
+
+She bent down suddenly and kissed him, to his no small surprise.  It
+pleased her that he showed consideration for others in his direct boyish
+way: she wondered whence he inherited that kindly characteristic.
+
+John suffered the caress, but he looked embarrassed.
+
+"I say," he said; "that's all right when we are alone; but don't do it
+in front of the others."
+
+And then, in case he had hurt her feelings, he slipped an arm round her
+waist, and walked with her, carrying the puppy, down the garden path in
+the brief twilight before the darkness fell.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.
+
+Four years passed away.  They were the years of the Great War, which
+flung the world into mourning and left a pall of depression like a
+blighting legacy on its passing.
+
+Among the men who left South Africa for Europe to fight for the old
+country was George Sinclair.  He had been one of the first to go; and
+after three years, the greater part of which was spent in France, he was
+shot through the lung, and invalided out and sent for treatment to
+England.
+
+During the years he was away he wrote to Esme regularly.  He had begged
+permission to write to her before he left.  He did not ask her to write
+in reply; and for a long while she received his letters without any
+thought of answering them.  But, as the war progressed and the horrors
+of war deepened, her sympathy with the man and her admiration for his
+cheerful courage, moved her to open a correspondence with him.
+
+She kept this letter writing up after he was in hospital, until she
+learnt from him that he was well and shortly sailing for home.  Then,
+though he still wrote every week, her letters ceased abruptly.  She
+dreaded his coming out.  She knew that he still loved her, that he meant
+to ask her to marry him.  He had given her to understand that before he
+left.  She liked him.  In a friendly way she was fond of him; but all
+her love had been given to Paul Hallam; and, although she now accepted
+the evidence of his death, her heart still cherished his memory, and
+turned in unforgettable longing towards the past.  Her happiness had
+ended in tragedy: but that was the common lot in those tragic times.
+
+The war with its harvest of death and suffering had put her own trouble
+further into the background than time itself could have succeeded in
+doing.  So much had happened within the past four years that was sad and
+stirring and broad in its appeal to the sympathies of even those outside
+the reach of these terrific happenings that the egotism of personal
+grief was merged with the wider sorrow in which the world shared.  It
+was no time for brooding: a common tragedy called for the utmost effort
+of endurance from all.
+
+In a sense the war proved helpful to Esme; the horror of the calamity
+took her out of herself, and prevented her from growing morbid through
+the overwhelming shock of her own great loss.  It had taken her a long
+time to reconcile herself to the belief that Paul was dead.  Conviction
+came to her slowly with the passing of time, and the absence of any word
+from him.  If he had been alive he would have contrived to let her know.
+It was unthinkable that he should have left her deliberately in a
+terrible suspense.  Hope died hard within her, but it died surely.  She
+mourned him as dead in her thoughts.  But she could never bring herself
+to visit the grave where he was laid to rest, above which had been
+erected a simple granite cross, inscribed with his name and the date of
+the year in which he died.  Jim had seen to these matters for her; she
+had been satisfied to leave them to him, and to ask no questions.  In
+his way her brother-in-law had been kind and helpful.  And John, who
+spent all his leisure time at her house, which had become a second home
+for him, proved a great comfort and companion.
+
+John was now sixteen, and his only regret was that he was not old enough
+to join up.  He admired and envied George Sinclair profoundly.  To
+return after three years' fighting with a pierced lung and covered with
+glory was a splendid record in young John's estimation.  He awaited
+Sinclair's return impatiently, eager for first-hand information of the
+wonderful doings in which he had longed to take part; while Esme awaited
+his coming with misgivings, and wondered what she would find to say to
+him when they met.  She recalled very vividly his coming to say goodbye
+to her on the evening before he sailed.
+
+"I am going to write to you," he had said, with his blue eyes on her
+face.  "Please don't forbid me that pleasure; it will be a tremendous
+help to me to be able to talk to you on paper.  I may never come back,
+you know; but if I do I shall come straight to you."
+
+He had gone away wearing a photograph of her which Rose had given him;
+that, and her friendly occasional letters, had proved the greatest
+happiness during those days of war and horror and discomfort.  And now
+he was returning, with her photograph worn in a locket, and with her
+letters, so frequently read that they tore where they were folded, tied
+together with a piece of ribbon that once had adorned a box of
+chocolates, and was faded and discoloured even as the package which it
+secured.
+
+He came to her, as he had said he would do, as soon as he arrived in the
+Bay.  He was shy, and a little uncertain of the welcome likely to be
+accorded to him.  The sudden cessation of her letters had damped his
+hopes considerably.
+
+She was walking in the garden when his taxi stopped at the gate.  He
+caught a glimpse of her through the mimosa trees, pacing the path slowly
+with the dog, Regret, walking beside her, close to her, his nose
+touching the hand which hung loosely at her side.
+
+Sinclair dismissed his driver and opened the gate and advanced swiftly
+along the path towards her.  She saw him and stood still, flushed and
+obviously nervous, waiting for him, while the dog bounded forward and
+sniffed the newcomer inquisitively, and finally leapt upon him in
+boisterous greeting.  He patted the dog's head, pushed it aside, and
+approached the woman, who remained still, watching him with eyes which
+smiled their welcome.  He took her outstretched hand and held it while
+he looked long and steadily into the face which had lived in his memory
+from the time when years ago he had met and loved her at the Zuurberg.
+Outwardly she had changed little: life had scored far deeper impressions
+on his face than on hers.
+
+"So glad to see you back, George," she said, with a faint show of
+embarrassment in her manner under his continued scrutiny.  "So very glad
+to see you safe and sound."
+
+He approached his face a little nearer to hers, still retaining her
+hand, which he held in a firm grip.
+
+"May I kiss you?" he asked.
+
+Instinctively she drew back, and then, as though regretting the impulse
+which had moved her to refuse his request, lifted her face and allowed
+him to kiss her lips.  He dropped her hand then, and turned and walked
+beside her towards the house.
+
+"You can't think what it means to me," he said, "to be home again--and
+with you.  I've had you in my thoughts, dear, every day.  Why did you
+suddenly cease writing, Esme?"
+
+"I don't know," she answered shyly, and ran up the steps on to the stoep
+and entered the house through the drawing-room window.
+
+He followed more slowly.  His gaze, travelling round the pretty room,
+fell on his own photograph in uniform on the mantelpiece.  He had sent
+her the photograph from England, and it pleased him to see it there.
+From the photograph his eyes went to her face and rested there, smiling
+and confident.  She stood facing the light, looking shy and a little
+overcome at seeing him.  Although she had been expecting him she felt
+oddly unprepared.  Everything seemed to have changed with his
+appearance.  He loomed large and substantial in the forefront of her
+thoughts, a person to be reckoned with, no longer the vague figure which
+had hovered indistinctly amid the confusion of her mind.  Deliberately
+she moved to the sofa and sat down, and the dog came and lay at her
+feet.  Sinclair seated himself beside her and played with the dog's
+ears.
+
+"I've a feeling," he said, without looking at her, "that all this is
+unreal.  It's been a sort of make-believe with me that I was with you
+over there.  I've talked with you, told you things in dumb show, often.
+I've pretended that you were present and could hear and respond.  Now
+I'm half afraid to look at you for fear you'll vanish.  Absurd, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Poor dear!" she said, and touched his hand gently.  He looked up then
+and smiled at her.
+
+"You know you haven't altered a bit since the days when we began our
+friendship amid the heights."
+
+"Ah!" she said, and the light in her eyes faded.  "I feel as though I
+had no connection with that girl at all.  It's not only the years which
+alter us, George.  You've been through experiences; they've changed you.
+Both of us look on life more seriously now.  We were boy and girl in
+those old days of which you speak.  I don't care to look back."
+
+"I don't wish you to look back," he said; "I want you to look forward--
+with me.  Esme, you know what my hope is?  I've besieged you for years.
+Can't you give me a different answer, dear?  I've waited so long.  It
+seems to me we are both of us rather lonely people.  Why won't you end
+all that, and make me happy?"
+
+Again she put out a hand, and this time she slipped it into his.  He sat
+holding it, waiting in an attitude of strained alertness for her answer.
+
+"It is because I like you so well," she said, "that I am reluctant to
+marry you.  I can't give you a fair return.  My dear, I've loved...
+There never could be any one else in my life--not in the same way."
+
+For a moment he remained silent.  He still held her hand; but he was not
+looking at her; he stared thoughtfully down at the carpet reflecting on
+what she had said.  Then abruptly he released her hand and sat up.
+
+"I'll take what you'll give," he said resolutely.
+
+She made no answer.  She could not speak just then for the emotion which
+gripped her.  There were tears in her eyes.  He leaned over her and very
+tenderly kissed the tears away.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.
+
+It surprised no one, and gave considerable satisfaction to her
+relations, when Esme, quite soon after Sinclair's return to South
+Africa, was married to the man who had been her faithful lover for over
+eight years.
+
+On the evening before her marriage she discussed the matter and her
+feelings quite frankly with Rose.
+
+"I'm not in love with George," she said, regarding her sister earnestly;
+"and I'm not marrying him out of pity.  I think chiefly it was a phrase
+he used which got me: `We are both of us rather lonely people.' ...
+That was how he put it.  And suddenly while he spoke a picture of the
+lonely years ahead for us flashed across my imagination.  It's true, you
+know; we are lonely; and we are both still young."
+
+"Yes," Rose agreed.  "I'm glad you see it like that.  I've hated to
+think of you alone always."
+
+"It's a little selfish, and altogether futile, to live wholly in the
+past," Esme resumed after a pause.  "My love for Paul is a sacred
+memory; but it should not prevent me from making George happy.  He is
+satisfied to take the risk."
+
+"George is a wise man," Rose responded; "he doesn't underrate his power
+to win your love.  You'll grow very fond of him, Esme; he is a lovable
+fellow."
+
+"I am fond of him," Esme answered.  "Do you suppose I would marry him
+otherwise?  I am bidding good-bye to the old life to-night, my dear; I
+am not dragging it with me into the life which begins to-morrow.  I feel
+as though I were beginning all over again.  It's a big break, you know."
+
+"I know."
+
+Rose's gaze travelled round the comfortable, homelike room, which from
+to-morrow would be deserted, and would ultimately pass to strangers.
+Henceforward Esme would live in Uitenhage, where George's work was.  He
+had furnished a house for her, and bought a car.  The sight of the car,
+which he purposed learning to drive, had reconciled John to his aunt's
+second marriage.  John's mother, while she gazed about her, was thinking
+of many things, other than motors, which might change and brighten her
+sister's life.  There was the possibility of children.  Esme had always
+desired children.  A baby's tiny hands would speedily heal old wounds;
+the feel of baby lips would stifle all regrets.  In Rose's opinion this
+marriage was altogether desirable; it closed the past completely.  In a
+sense it seemed to her that her sister's life was only now beginning.
+The curtain had rung down on the prologue, and was about to rise for the
+first act of the actual drama.
+
+The Sinclairs spent two weeks in Natal after the wedding.  It was Esme's
+idea to go to Durban for the brief holiday, which was all the leave
+George could obtain.  Sinclair himself had no preference; any place, so
+long as he had Esme with him, would have seemed Eden to him.  He was
+extravagantly happy.  The wish of his heart was realised.  The
+intervening years of bitterness and regret and jealousy were forgotten
+in the supreme satisfaction of possession.  The woman whom he had
+married was his girl sweetheart, to whom he had remained faithful
+through long years of disappointment and hopeless longing.  There had
+never been, never could have been, any one else for him.  Now that she
+was his wife, he set himself to the task of teaching her to forget the
+man whose influence, dead even as when he had been alive, interposed
+between them.  He was determined to win her love, all her love; the
+strength of his steadfast devotion insisted on a like response.  She was
+very sweet to him, very gracious and kind in manner: time, he believed,
+would give him his desire.  He must have patience, be content to wait.
+He had waited so long to win her that this further waiting appeared a
+small matter compared with what he had endured.  With her beside him
+everything seemed possible, and life was a succession of glad and
+perfect days.
+
+They spent an ideal fortnight together.  Neither referred to it as a
+honeymoon: it was just a holiday, a pleasant period of sight-seeing and
+excursions, of bathing and dancing and strolling together in the
+moonlight.  Unconsciously they recovered something of the youth they had
+been allowing to slip past them unheeded, and realised with a sort of
+surprise the leaven of frivolity hidden beneath their more serious
+qualities.
+
+If Esme did not find the same deep happiness which she had known in her
+life with Paul Hallam, she was at least care free.  George was a normal
+healthy-minded mail, popular with his fellows, and possessed of keen
+powers of appreciation and enjoyment; and he succeeded, in rousing her
+to a new interest in things.  His devotion touched her deeply.  She
+began to realise that without being passionately in love, it was
+possible to love tenderly.  Her life with George promised to be a
+satisfying and peaceful one.  She resolved that as far as it lay in her
+power she would make him happy.
+
+Life is all a matter of adaptability.  Given the qualities of kindness
+and a tolerant disposition, it is not difficult to be happy and to give
+happiness.  In the case of large-hearted people love develops naturally;
+and Esme and George had known one another a long time and intimately;
+they were good comrades when they married; no feeling of strangeness or
+shyness marred the ease of their intercourse.  Even when they returned
+and took up their residence in their new home it was all pleasantly
+familiar.  They had chosen the house together, furnished it according to
+their mutual tastes: there was not a corner of the place, or a thing in
+it, they had not inspected together, discussed, disputed over, and
+finally come to agreement about.
+
+And Regret was there to welcome them, the faithful watch-dog which had
+been Esme's constant companion since the day when, as a puppy, John had
+placed it in her arms.  She stooped down to pat the dog, which bounded
+out of the house and down the steps to meet her, jumping up and licking
+her hand.
+
+"He's a bit overwhelming in his attentions," George remarked.
+
+He despatched the coloured boy, who stood grinning on the stoep, to
+assist with the baggage, and put a hand in Esme's arm and drew her into
+the house.  Everywhere there were flowers; masses of roses in bowls, and
+long sprays in taller vases of the crimson passion-flower.  Esme stood
+still and looked about her with pleased eyes.
+
+"Rose has been busy here," she said.  "It looks lovely, doesn't it?
+George, it's a dear little house; and the garden is wonderful."
+
+She stood by the window, looking out on the cool green of grass, on the
+blaze of colour from the flower borders, on neatly gravelled paths.
+Here, too, there were roses; the green of the lawn was patterned gaily
+with their petals which the soft, warm wind had scattered wide and blown
+into little heaps and again distributed these in a pleasing blending of
+colour; the path was covered with them, sweet-scented, and newly
+scattered by the breeze.
+
+"It looks festive," she remarked.
+
+"It looks as if the boy had better get to work with a broom," George
+replied.
+
+"Prosaic person?" she said, laughing.  And added: "Let them stay.  It's
+a sweet disorder, anyhow."
+
+He stooped to kiss her.
+
+"You are a sweet woman," he said, and put his arm about her, and stood
+looking with her out upon the small but pretty garden of their home.
+
+Pride of ownership filled the man's brain, flooded his heart with genial
+warmth, even as the sunlight which flooded the garden and shone hotly on
+the gaily coloured flowers in the borders.  He felt that life had
+nothing more to offer him; his cup of happiness was full to the brim.
+
+But to the woman, looking out on the sunlight with him, such complete
+satisfaction was not possible.  She was content.  But the sun of her
+happiness had passed its zenith and was on the decline.
+
+Together they went through the house on a tour of inspection, while
+lunch was preparing.  Each room called for comment and fresh expressions
+of delight.  They came to their bedroom last.  George sat on the side of
+the bed while Esme removed her hat and gave little touches and pats to
+her hair, standing before the mirror and surveying her appearance
+critically.  She discovered a tiny powder puff and dabbed her face with
+it.  These mysteries of the toilet interested George profoundly.  He
+disapproved of the puff.
+
+"I can't understand why you do that," he said.  "Your skin's all right."
+
+"We do a lot of incomprehensible things," she returned, laughing at him.
+"Men shave, for instance, though nature intended them to wear hair on
+the face."
+
+"That's one up to you, old dear," he said, and got up and seized her by
+the shoulders and kissed her.  "It's rather jolly to be in our own home.
+It was nice being away together; but this...  Esme, I feel
+extraordinarily happy.  It seems too good to be true, too good to last.
+It's great."
+
+"Silly old duffer!" she said, smiling back into his eager eyes.  "Why
+should the good things be less enduring than the evil?"
+
+"Put like that, I don't see why they should be," he responded.  "Wise
+little woman! we will make our good time last for all our lives."
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY.
+
+Time passed, and the Sinclair menage increased its numbers by one.  A
+baby girl was born to Esme, and was christened, despite its father's
+protests, Georgina.
+
+The baby ruled the household, and tyrannised over its parents, and made
+slaves of its godparents, who were amazingly interested in this small
+cousin of theirs.  Mary, a pretty girl of nineteen, with all her sex's
+partiality for babies, worshipped at the shrine of the new arrival;
+John, with masculine mistrust of humanity in miniature, regarded the
+infant doubtfully, until, with its further development, it captivated
+him with its smile.  From the moment when the baby first smiled at him,
+John lost his awe of it.  He found it infinitely more amusing than any
+puppy.  He carried it about the garden, bundled under one arm like a
+parcel, to its intense gratification.  It was a good-tempered mite, and
+seldom cried.
+
+The coming of her baby brought complete happiness to Esme.  It entirely
+changed the current of her thoughts, and drew her closer in love and
+sympathy to George, cementing their union with the strongest bond which
+married life can forge.  Her love for George, as the father of her
+child, became a fine and tender emotion.  She loved him in relation to
+the child.  The great desire of her life was granted.  She had her baby:
+life could give her no greater happiness.
+
+Sinclair took very kindly to the parental role.  Young things appealed
+to him; and he was immensely proud of his daughter, whose coming had
+completed the home circle, had indeed filled the home and banished for
+ever the quiet of former days.  He never tired of watching Esme with the
+child.  She suggested the incarnate picture of motherhood, with the
+brooding look of love and contentment in her eyes.
+
+The gap was filled; and the old life with Paul slipped further into the
+background of her thoughts.
+
+And in England a man, newly released from a German prison camp, ill,
+half-starved, with nerves racked and shaken, a physical wreck, was
+thinking of his wife in Africa, and wondering how life had gone with her
+in the years since he had left her because he had felt himself to be
+unfit to breathe the same air with her.
+
+Had she grieved for him, he wondered?  Or had she felt contempt for his
+weakness, blamed him for a coward, for leaving her secretly like a
+criminal?  The years since he had left his home were so many that it was
+more than possible she believed him to be dead.  Several times since he
+was made a prisoner, dining the early days of war, he had written to
+her; but, receiving no replies to his communications, he concluded that
+these, for some obscure reason of his captors, were never sent.  Many
+men, like himself, had been similarly cut off from all communication
+with their friends.  He had considered the question of writing after his
+release; but decided against it; he would wait until he saw her.  His
+return would prove a shock in any case.  He preferred to reserve
+explanations until he could offer them in person and comfort her for the
+sorrow of their years of separation.
+
+Not once did it ever enter Paul Hallam's thoughts that his wife, even
+though she might believe him to be dead--which he considered likely--
+would have married again.  It simply did not occur to him.
+
+For some months he remained in a convalescent home in England,
+recovering slowly from the privations of prison life in Germany: for a
+further period he waited for the purpose of proving for his own
+satisfaction that, with every facility to indulge his former vice, the
+desire no longer tormented him.  Then, in a mood of deep thankfulness,
+with a heart surcharged with love, and with an intense longing for Esme
+exciting his imagination, he sailed for Cape Town in the first available
+ship.
+
+Strangely, at the time of Hallam's sailing and during the weeks the
+voyage occupied, Esme was troubled with dreams of him.  Night after
+night she woke trembling in the darkness, with the vision, which sleep
+had brought to her lingering in her imagination, of Paul standing before
+her and gazing at her and turning away from her.  Always the dream was
+the same.  Suddenly the vision would appear; his eyes would gaze into
+her eyes, then abruptly he would turn about; and she would wake to
+darkness, to the stillness of the night, and to her own nervous fears.
+Why should the dream haunt her now, when she was learning to forget?
+
+And Hallam, on board the ship which steered its difficult course slowly
+to avoid the danger of floating mines, looked across the blue waste of
+waters with the image of his wife's face ever before him, and the
+thought of her in his mind during every wakeful hour.  He, too, awoke in
+the night, thinking of her, and lay awake in the darkness to the sound
+of the swish of the waves, picturing his return and the wonderful
+gladness he anticipated as shining in her eyes at sight of him.  All the
+distress and horror of the past would be wiped out and forgotten in the
+happiness of their reunion.  He would never again give her cause for a
+moment's anxiety.  He would fill her life with love; there should be
+nothing to give her sorrow any more.
+
+Slowly the blue distance which separated them narrowed, narrowed until
+the land came within sight, mistily, like a cloud against the deep azure
+of the sky, a cloud which resolved itself into a square mass of rock,
+blue-grey in the sunlight which shone upon the city at the base of the
+mountain, shone upon the sea, lit everything with a blaze of golden
+light.  The ship glided past the breakwater into dock.
+
+Hallam was among the first to go ashore.  Before sailing he had cabled
+to his solicitor to inform him that he was coming out.  He drove now
+direct to the lawyer's office.  He wanted news of his wife before seeing
+her, wanted to glean some idea as to what his long absence and
+unaccountable silence was attributed to; whether Esme and others
+supposed him to be dead; in which event it might be inadvisable to
+appear before her suddenly and without any preparation.
+
+The reception which he received from his man of business and one-time
+friend surprised him.  Mr Huntley, of the firm of Huntley and Thorne,
+was manifestly embarrassed by the sight of his former client, whom he
+interviewed in his private office, after issuing the strictest orders
+against interruption.  His obvious nervousness, and the absence of any
+sign of welcome in his manner, impressed Hallam oddly.  Had the man been
+guilty of embezzling trust money, which Hallam knew him to be incapable
+of, he could not have betrayed greater dismay at the meeting.
+
+"This is immensely surprising, Hallam," he said.  "I have not yet
+recovered from the amazement which the receipt of your cablegram caused
+me.  You see, I--we all concluded you were dead.  The mistake was
+perfectly natural."
+
+"I grant that," Hallam answered, considerably mystified and a little
+annoyed by the other's manner.  "At the same time I don't see why it
+should be regarded in the light of a misfortune that I am not dead."
+
+"My dear fellow!  Certainly not.  But you must allow for a certain--
+astonishment.  I might even put it more strongly.  Your return after so
+long a period calls for such an abrupt readjustment.  There have been
+changes.  I don't see how you can expect otherwise.  I've sat in this
+chair day after day since receiving your cable trying to resolve some
+way out of the muddle.  I haven't communicated with--with your wife.
+You didn't instruct us, so I've done nothing."
+
+"Quite right," Hallam said.
+
+"I prefer to see her myself."
+
+"You haven't written?"
+
+"No.  I am going home when I leave here."
+
+"But Mrs Hallam has left Cape Town.  She gave up the house and went
+round to Port Elizabeth and took a house there.  Since then she--she has
+given up that house also, I believe.  In fact I know she has.  We manage
+her affairs for her."
+
+Hallam nodded.
+
+"I see nothing very extraordinary in these changes," he said.  "It was
+not to be expected that she should remain in Cape Town alone.  She has
+relations at the Bay."
+
+Mr Huntley was silent.  He took up from the desk before him, and put
+down again, a little sheaf of papers, and fidgeted with a pen lying
+beside the blotting-pad.  He looked as he felt, immensely embarrassed.
+
+"My dear Hallam," he burst forth at length, "I don't wish to appear to
+criticise your actions, but your absence--your complete disappearance,
+in fact, seems to me inexplicable.  That is how it would strike any
+unbiassed person.  Whatever your private reasons were for leaving your
+home, you might at least have kept us informed as to your whereabouts.
+It would have prevented a great deal of subsequent distress."
+
+Hallam looked at the speaker in surprise.  The last thing he had
+anticipated was this tone of rebuke from his old friend.  That Huntley
+should suppose he had deliberately suppressed all information relating
+to himself struck him as an unjust view to take; he resented it.
+
+"I have been a prisoner in Germany since the beginning of the war," he
+said quietly.  "I wrote home many letters in the early days of my
+captivity.  I wrote to you.  Oh! there's no need to tell me you never
+received it.  I got no replies to anything I sent out; so I left off
+writing after a time.  My case was not exceptional."
+
+Huntley leaned with his arm along the desk and looked earnestly into
+Hallam's eyes: his own eyes expressed an immense sympathy.
+
+"Good God, Hallam!" he said.
+
+Suddenly he grasped Hallam's hand and wrung it hard.
+
+"I don't know how to tell you," he added.  "But the thing has got to be
+faced.  Your body was found, and identified by your brother-in-law.
+You've been dead these many years.  And your wife--"
+
+"Yes?"  Hallam said, in a tone of deadly quiet.
+
+"Your wife married again, and is living in Uitenhage."
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE.
+
+Hallam recoiled from the news of Esme's marriage as a man might recoil
+from the effects of a blow.  The thing staggered him.  His first thought
+was to disappear again, to walk away from Huntley's office, and turn his
+back for ever on the country which was home to him no longer and held no
+place for him.  He felt dazed with grief and anger.  The thought of Esme
+as the wife of another man was intolerable.  He could not reconcile it
+with his knowledge of her that she should seek consolation elsewhere.
+It was like some hideous nightmare, some terrible hoax, that was being
+practised on him for the purpose of torturing him.
+
+He could not determine how to act in the circumstances; he could not
+think; his mind was blank with despair.  And then jealousy awoke; his
+thoughts gained stimulus, and worked in a new direction along fines that
+were fiercely personal and possessive in outlook.  After all, she was
+his wife.  This man had no claim on her; she belonged to him.  He was
+not going to allow any one to hold what was lawfully his.
+
+This sense of urgency to resume possession spurred him to a fever of
+aggressive activity, in which mood, and with the settled purpose of
+interviewing his brother-in-law, he went round to Port Elizabeth, and
+called on Jim Bainbridge at the latter's place of business as soon as he
+arrived.
+
+To say that Jim Bainbridge was amazed at the sight of him, were to
+express his emotions as inadequately as it would be to describe a
+violent explosion as disquieting to the unfortunate persons within the
+affected area: the effect on him was rather similar to the effects of an
+explosion; he was literally bowled over on beholding a dead man returned
+to the world of the living.  Had he been given to the cult of the
+supernatural he would have imagined that he saw Paul Hallam's ghost,
+when Hallam walked into his office.  But he did not believe in ghosts;
+and there was something uncomfortably lifelike in the hostile gleam of
+Hallam's eyes, as he turned from shutting the door and regarded the man
+seated in his swivel-chair, with jaw dropped, and with protruding eyes
+which stared back at him stupidly.
+
+"Oh hell!" muttered Jim Bainbridge, and collapsed in his seat in a
+crumpled heap.
+
+Hallam advanced deliberately, and seated himself opposite his
+dumbfounded brother-in-law.
+
+"I knew I was bound to give you an unpleasant surprise," he said, "so I
+didn't make an appointment.  I've come for news of my wife."
+
+Bainbridge's jaw dropped lower in his increasing consternation.  The
+man's florid countenance had turned the colour of putty.
+
+"Your--Oh lord!"
+
+The words gurgled in his throat.  He gripped the arms of his chair and
+attempted to sit up straighter and to get control of himself.  Compared
+with his nervous collapse the calm of Hallam's demeanour was remarkable.
+
+"Look here," he muttered, fumbling for words, his bewildered gaze fixed
+upon the other's face.  "Don't you try to rush things.  I've got to get
+used to this idea.  I'm all abroad.  When a man has been missing for
+years one doesn't expect to see him walk in as if he had been away on a
+holiday.  What in hell do you mean by turning up here after all this
+time?  Where've you been?  Man, you were found--dead--and buried.
+There's a stone erected to your memory out on the veld beyond Bulawayo.
+You've no right to disappear and turn up again after six years.  It's
+indecent."
+
+"It's awkward, I admit," Hallam returned grimly, and regarded the other
+sternly with the angry light of accusation in his keen eyes.  "I want an
+explanation of your reasons for swearing falsely to my identity.  You
+buried another man under my name--why?"
+
+"Paul, I swear I thought it was you--believe me, or not, as you will."
+Suddenly Bainbridge turned with quick suspicion in his look, and smote
+the arm of his chair fiercely.  "You put that trick on us--to deceive
+us.  Why was that man dressed in your clothes, and carrying your papers?
+Poor devil! there wasn't anything else left of him that one could swear
+to."
+
+"I see.  No," Hallam shook his head; "you are on the wrong track.  I owe
+my life to the man you buried--I don't know his name.  I don't know how
+he came by his death.  I know nothing about him; save that he came to my
+aid when I was past aiding myself.  Then he left me to the care of
+natives, and robbed me; left me with his old clothes, and nothing of my
+own but my boots, which, presumably, didn't fit him.  Oddly, he didn't
+discover that the boots had double soles and were lined with notes.  He
+stole all the money I had on me, which was considerable, and which
+possibly cost him his life.  He did me good service; though through his
+death he injured me more than he could have done had he murdered me.
+It's a grim mistake; and it's going to lead to grim consequences."
+
+Bainbridge stared hard at the speaker.
+
+"The muddle is of your own making," he said sullenly.  "Why did you
+never send a line?  Esme fretted her heart out for news of you."
+
+"She soon recovered from her distress," Hallam replied.
+
+"You've heard?"--Bainbridge broke off in his question abruptly.
+
+"That she married Sinclair--yes.  That is what I have come to talk over
+with you."
+
+"Well, look here!"  Jim Bainbridge leaned his head on his hand and
+thought hard.  "Why didn't you send a line?" he repeated in tones of
+exasperation.  "Man, don't you see how a word from you would have saved
+the situation?  It's your own fault, Paul.  You've brought this on
+yourself."
+
+"I acknowledge the justice of that.  I might have written--in the early
+days.  But, for reasons which Esme alone could appreciate, I refrained
+from writing then.  Later communication became impossible.  I went to
+England and joined up.  I didn't mean to join up.  But if you'd been on
+the spot you'd understand the pressing urgency that impelled a man to
+go.  I was among the first batch of prisoners taken by the Germans.
+It's a long story anyhow.  I'll tell it to her.  She will understand."
+
+But that was exactly what Jim Bainbridge intended to dissuade him from
+doing.  The moral rights of the case were too subtle for him to grasp;
+but he appreciated fully the insuperable difficulties of a readjustment
+under existing conditions.  The lives of three people would be upset and
+the happiness of none secured.  The only way to avoid further muddle was
+to allow the present muddle to go on.  That was how he saw it; and he
+hoped to persuade Hallam into taking his view.
+
+"Do many people know of your return?" he asked.
+
+Hallam looked surprised.
+
+"Only Huntley and yourself."
+
+"In your place, I should clear out," Bainbridge advised.  "Why not leave
+the country altogether, Paul?  I'll keep my mouth shut."
+
+As the drift of his meaning dawned on him, Hallam's face hardened; the
+grey eyes shone steel-like.  Jim Bainbridge, observing him closely,
+realised that the task he had set himself would prove no easy matter;
+but he braced himself to fight for the peace of mind of the woman whose
+happiness hung in the balance.
+
+"You know," he added, after a brief moment for reflection, "your long
+absence, your silence, amount pretty near to desertion.  I don't know
+much about the blooming divorce laws in this country; but I fancy if we
+stretched our imaginations a bit we could make out a good case.  Clear
+out, Paul.  Make it a case of desertion proper.  It's the only decent
+course to take.  You don't want to injure Esme further.  Leave her
+alone."
+
+"And condone a bigamy--in which my own wife is concerned!  She _is_ my
+wife.  I will agree to a divorce only if she wishes it."
+
+"Man, can't you see the unnecessary cruelty of letting her know you're
+alive?  She's got used to thinking of you as dead.  She's happy."
+Bainbridge leaned nearer to him and threw out a protesting hand.  "It's
+hard on you.  I admit it's hard on you--damned hard.  But--hang it
+all!--you created the muddle.  If it were only a matter of your claim
+against George's, I wouldn't offer advice; but it isn't.  It's a case
+which would baffle Solomon himself.  There's a kid--a baby girl.  If I'm
+not mistaken, the baby's got a stronger claim than either of you two
+men.  Some women are like that.  Esme lives for the child."
+
+He broke off, heated by his unusual eloquence, and uncomfortably aware
+of the expression of black hate on his listener's face.  Hallam sat
+silent, staring straight before him.  The news of the child was the last
+dreg of bitterness in the cup which he was forced to drain.  The thought
+of the child infuriated him, filled him with intolerable jealousy.
+Esme, his wife,--with a child--which was not his!  The thing would not
+bear thinking about.  And yet it stuck in his thoughts, tormented his
+thoughts, would not be dismissed however much he strove to thrust it
+aside.  In the moment when Jim Bainbridge let fall this bomb Hallam's
+feeling for his wife underwent a sudden revulsion.  It seemed to him
+that his love died as surely as if it had never been.  It seemed to him,
+too, though he knew the thought to be an injustice, that the wife he had
+loved was unworthy, was no better than a light woman.  She had consoled
+herself very speedily.  His years of self-discipline had been spent in
+vain.  He had gained a victory over himself at a terrible price--the
+price of his wife.  He had lost the fruits of his labour; even as a man
+who will sometimes strive, putting all his endeavour into one harvest,
+to be ruthlessly cheated of the profit of his toil by some unforeseen
+calamity, such as drought or other disaster.  These things happen: it is
+the throw of the dice of chance.
+
+"You had to know," remarked Jim Bainbridge abruptly, feeling the urgency
+to say something to end the strained silence which had followed upon his
+disclosure, and busying himself with his pipe in order to avoid seeing
+the play of bitter emotion which disfigured the other man's features.
+"Some one had to tell you.  It complicates matters."
+
+"Yes."  Hallam stood up.  "I wasn't prepared for this," he said.  "I've
+got to think about it.  I'll see you again some other time.  If you want
+me, I'm staying at the `Grand.'"
+
+"Man, I'm sorry about this," Bainbridge said, and held out his hand.
+
+Hallam did not even see it.  Like a man in a trance he turned and walked
+out of the place.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.
+
+Jim Bainbridge whistled.  He filled his pipe and lighted it, and let it
+go out again.  He repeated this performance until he had exhausted all
+the matches in his box; then he put the pipe down and sat back in his
+seat, with his thumbs in his braces, and cogitated.
+
+It was a hell of a mess.  No other phrase described the situation so
+aptly.  It _was_ a hell of a mess.  He could not see how it was to be
+cleaned up exactly.  Why the devil, instead of being taken prisoner,
+could not the fellow have stopped a bullet?  That would have been a
+creditable finish.  Well, he hadn't.  He was back again; and it looked
+as though there was going to be the hell of a fuss.
+
+For several minutes Jim Bainbridge ceased from his meditations and
+coloured the air luridly with the variety and force of his expressions;
+then he cooled down again, and fell once more into thought.  This thing
+had to be kept from his wife.  The fewer the people in possession of the
+uncomfortable facts the better for the present.  There was no need to
+confess to a cat in the bag until the brute mewed.
+
+It wasn't his affair anyway.
+
+Suddenly he remembered, with a distinct disinclination to face Esme in
+the circumstances, that they were dining at the Sinclairs' that night.
+It was a memorable occasion--the baby's first birthday.  A nice sort of
+birthday surprise he had up his sleeve!
+
+"Blast the baby!" he muttered; and immediately felt ashamed of himself.
+It was most assuredly none of the baby's fault.
+
+The case, looked at from any point, looked at all the way round,
+presented no possible solution to his mind.  He had not liked the look
+in Hallam's eyes when the latter walked out.  He did not feel sure of
+the man, of how he would act, what his purpose was.  There was trouble
+in the air; the atmosphere was heavy with it.  He stared out of the
+window.  It was a bright sunny day, hot and clear; it ought to have been
+thunder weather; and it was not: the thunder was all within--in the
+minds of men, in Hallam's mind in particular.  What was he going to do?
+
+Bainbridge kicked the desk in front of him savagely, and got up and put
+his coat on.  If he sat there any longer he would be moved to do
+something ridiculous.  He would go out, walk along the Main Street, and
+talk with any one he chanced to meet.  He must get a grip on himself
+before he faced Rose, or she would draw the whole thing out of him.  And
+Lord knew what would happen then!  For her own sake he wanted to keep
+his wife in ignorance of this wretched business until secrecy was no
+longer possible.
+
+"There's no sense in unfurling an umbrella before the rain falls," he
+soliloquised.  "There is always a chance that the cloud won't burst."
+
+The abstraction of his manner at lunch that day excited general comment.
+Rose jumped to the conclusion that business was worrying him, and
+showed immediate concern for the family finances; and so exasperated him
+that he left the house in a rage and went back to his office in an
+irritable frame of mind.
+
+"The old man's temper is getting a bit frayed at the edges," John
+observed, with filial candour.
+
+"Oh! daddy's all right," said Mary, "if you don't take his little moods
+seriously.  He is always excitable when he is going to a party."
+
+The irritability had worn off, but the abstraction deepened when Jim
+Bainbridge escorted his family to the Sinclairs' house that evening.  It
+was entirely a family gathering.  Sinclair's sister and her husband were
+present, beside his wife's relations; there were no other guests.  Jim
+Bainbridge, when he kissed his sister-in-law, had an odd feeling that
+there was another uninvited guest there, a hovering presence of which he
+alone was aware.  This sinister, lurking shadow stood between Esme and
+the man who, all unconscious of the danger which threatened his
+happiness, welcomed his wife's relations with frank cordiality.
+Bainbridge wrung his hand hard on an impulse of genuine sympathy.  He
+liked George.  It distressed him to think of the blow which might fall
+at any moment.  The calm happiness of Esme's face, George's genial
+smile, arrested his attention, played on his imagination to an unusual
+degree.  It was not his wont to notice such things; but to-night he was
+stirred out of his phlegmatic indifference to a very vivid and human
+interest in the concerns of these people, whose lives were overshadowed
+by a tremendous crisis.
+
+The references to the baby, the laughing congratulations of the guests,
+jarred on his nerves.  He refrained from any mention of the child.  And
+at dinner, when Georgina's health was drunk in champagne, he alone
+ignored the toast.  For the life of him, he could not have joined in the
+farce of the general rejoicing.  Later, in the drawing-room, Esme sat
+down beside him and rallied him on his preoccupation.
+
+"You are bored, Jim," she said.  "I believe you are longing to be home
+and in bed."
+
+"No.  But I've got the toothache," he lied.
+
+"Poor old dear!  I'm sorry.  Come upstairs and have a peep at the babe
+asleep.  She looks such a duck in her cot."
+
+He followed her from the room and upstairs to the nursery.  There was a
+nurse in charge, but she withdrew when they entered, to Jim Bainbridge's
+infinite relief.  Esme pulled aside the mosquito net and bent over the
+cot.  Her eyes, the man observed, were soft with mother-love as she
+leaned down towards the sleeping child.  He did not look at the child;
+he was intent upon her.
+
+"Isn't she sweet?" she said, and glanced up at him, smiling.
+
+His own face was grave, even stern in expression.  He was watching her
+attentively, wondering about her, wondering how the news of Paul's
+return would affect her when she knew.
+
+"I believe you care more for that kid than you do for--any one," he said
+gruffly.  "If you could go back...  If it were possible, say, to begin
+again--with Paul...  Would you be willing to give up the kid--for him?"
+
+Abruptly she straightened herself and stood beside the cot, holding the
+mosquito net in her hand, and looking at him fixedly with an air of
+troubled surprise.
+
+"Jim," she said, and her face saddened, "what put it into your mind to
+ask me that question?  One can never go back.  I wish you hadn't said
+that--to-night.  What brought that idea into your mind?"
+
+"I don't know."
+
+He fidgeted nervously with his collar and avoided her gaze.  She was
+looking at him with a puzzled, questioning expression in her eyes, with
+no suspicion of his purpose in mentioning Paul's name, but struck by the
+coincidence that Paul should be in his thoughts, even as he was in hers.
+
+"It's strange you should have said that," she continued.  "Lately I have
+been dreaming of Paul.  I dream of him nearly every night."
+
+"Dream of him!" he echoed blankly.  "Do you mean that you dream that
+he's alive?"
+
+"I dream that I see him looking at me," she answered.  "He looks into my
+eyes and turns away; and then I wake and lie in the darkness, trembling.
+The dream is always the same."
+
+"I say! that's queer," he said, staring at her, as earlier in the day he
+had stared at Hallam, as if he saw a ghost.  These things were making
+him superstitious.  "What should make you do that, I wonder?"
+
+"Who can say?  It's a matter of nerves, I suppose."  She dropped the net
+she was holding and put a hand on his arm and drew him towards the door.
+"Come along down, old thing," she said.  "We are not good company for
+one another to-night.  For your toothache, and my heartache, we must
+seek an anodyne in the society of the others."
+
+But for Bainbridge's imaginary toothache there was no effective anodyne:
+the complexities of the situation were altogether beyond his efforts at
+elucidation.  There was nothing for it but to stand by and wait for the
+blow to fall.
+
+He sat on the stoep and talked with Lake, George's brother-in-law, about
+the native labour unrest, and the advisability of adopting strong
+measures in quelling the agitation.
+
+"This native question is going to be a big problem in the near future,"
+Lake opined.  "We give the coloured man too much power."
+
+"What other course is possible with a civilised system of government?"
+Bainbridge contended.
+
+"But the coloured man isn't properly civilised," Lake insisted; "that's
+the point.  He hasn't grasped the rudiments of citizenship yet."
+
+"Well, we've got to teach him.  He's learning."
+
+Bainbridge's mood forced him into a reluctant opposition.  He was not in
+sympathy with the coloured man, but he took up his defence warmly.  He
+and Lake plunged into argument; while in the room behind them Mary sang
+in a fresh, sweet soprano voice to Esme's accompaniment, and the rest
+sat about and listened and joined in the popular choruses.
+
+And, a few miles away, walking along the shore in the darkness, a man,
+alone and with a mind black with despair, thought of the wife he had
+come back to claim, and of a child which was not his...
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE.
+
+Throughout that night Hallam tramped along the shore, struck inland,
+came back to the sea, retraced his steps over the same ground; walking
+with tireless energy while he considered the position, so hopelessly
+complicated by the birth of the child.
+
+His feeling for Esme oscillated between love and hate.  He thought of
+her as his dear wife, and wanted her urgently; again he thought of her
+as the mother of Sinclair's child, and his heart turned from her, grew
+hard with bitter jealousy and revulsion.  The thought of the child
+infuriated him--the child who stood between him and the woman whom he
+loved and who belonged to him.  She was his wife; he could claim her.
+But would she give up the baby for him?  Would she forsake all the new
+love which had come into her life for the sake of the old love, so
+unexpectedly come back to her, almost like a gift from the grave?  He
+could not tell.  Intimately as he knew her nature, confident in his
+assurance that the best of her love had been given to him, there was yet
+a side of her character with which he was wholly unfamiliar, the
+maternal side.  He had no means of judging how far her motherhood would
+influence her.  That the maternal instinct was deep-rooted with her he
+knew; that much she had revealed to him during their married life.  She
+had hungered for a child...
+
+He stood still on the sands, looking seaward, with hands clasped behind
+him, his shoulders bent.  He became suddenly conscious of great physical
+fatigue.  He had walked far and for many hours--walked, as he had been
+thinking, in a circle which brought him back to the starting point, no
+whit further advanced towards the solving of the problem which harassed
+his mind, and which, on setting forth, he had determined to solve before
+another dawn broke.  And already the first sign of dawn showed in the
+pallid skyline where it touched the sea.  The feel of the air was fresh
+and pure; it followed upon the hot darkness of the passing night like a
+revivifying breath.  Hallam felt its coolness on his forehead and lifted
+his face to meet it, and beheld the stars glowing fainter, and the
+darkness yielding reluctantly to the grey of the creeping dawn.
+
+Another day was advancing upon him, another day of perplexity and doubt
+and bitter torment; creeping upon him like a cold shadow out of the
+darker shadows, bringing with it no hope, only a deeper sense of
+despair.
+
+What ought he to do?
+
+Was it clearly his duty, as Bainbridge had sought to indicate, to leave
+Esme in the undisturbed belief in his death and in her false position as
+George Sinclair's wife?  That course raised so many points, legal and
+ethical, which made its adoption difficult, if not impossible.  There
+was the question of income.  Why should his income, as well as his wife,
+be enjoyed by the man who, even though unwittingly, had nevertheless
+robbed him of everything?  There was the other resource of collusive
+divorce.  But that was only practicable by agreement, which would
+involve the disturbing of Esme's peace of mind, and invest her with the
+responsibility of decision.  There was the third course of claiming her
+as his wife.  Here again the difficulty of the child obtruded itself, an
+insuperable barrier to the happiness of all concerned.  He wanted his
+wife, but he did not want the child; on that point he was firmly
+resolved.  It was the one point in the series of complications upon
+which he entertained no doubt.  The child was not his; he had no thought
+of adopting it as his: he was jealous of it, more jealous of it than he
+was of Sinclair.  Its very helplessness made it a tremendous factor in
+the case.
+
+He wondered dully how Esme, when she learned of it, would receive the
+news of his return?  Judged by ordinary standpoints, his manner of
+leaving her, of allowing her to remain uninformed as to his whereabouts,
+was unpardonable.  Practically it amounted to desertion, as Bainbridge
+said.  But his mental condition at the time he left his home was
+responsible for his amazing conduct.  The voyage to England had been
+undertaken for the purpose of regaining strength, of regaining control
+of his nerves; the rest had been due to the unfortunate accident of
+circumstances: it might have happened to any one; it had happened to
+other men.  Plenty of fellows reported missing had turned up again.  He
+wondered whether any man, beside himself, had returned to his home to
+find his wife married again?  And, if so, how he had acted?  No
+precedent could have aided him in his dilemma; each case called for
+individual action which must be governed largely by circumstances.  The
+big stumbling block in his own case was the child.  Everything worked
+round to that one point and stuck there; it formed a cul-de-sac to every
+line of thought.
+
+Wearily Hallam returned to his hotel and went to bed and fell into the
+heavy, unrefreshing sleep of physical and mental exhaustion.
+
+Later in the day he went again to Jim Bainbridge's office.  Bainbridge
+was not in; his return was expected any minute.  Hallam decided to wait
+for him.  He waited a long time.  No one came to disturb him.  His
+presence was, as a matter of fact, forgotten in the excitement of the
+unusual doings outside the Court House.  The Square and the streets
+leading to it were choked with natives, agitators, angrily demanding the
+release of their leader, whom the authorities had arrested as a
+disturber of, and a menace to, the peace of the community.
+
+Hallam knew of these matters only through the talk overheard at the
+hotel.  He had noticed an unusually large crowd of natives when he
+descended the hill on his way to see Bainbridge.  The crowd had swelled
+its numbers since then, though it had not yet attained to the dangerous
+proportions which it did later, when the serious rioting took place, and
+the massed ranks of dark forms surged in ugly rushes upon the building
+which was held by a brave handful of Europeans.
+
+The angry murmur of the mob rose and died down, and rose again, louder
+and more continuous.  The sounds penetrated to the quiet room where
+Hallam sat, so engrossed with the turmoil of his own thoughts that these
+signs of men's passions aroused beyond control excited in him merely a
+faint curiosity.  He rose and went out into the street to ascertain what
+the disturbance was about.
+
+The sight of the vast concourse of natives amazed him.  From every
+direction dark running figures appeared, many of them armed with sticks,
+and all making for the same point, wedging themselves into the crowd
+like stray pieces in one gigantic whole.  There was no possibility of
+getting past them; it would be dangerous, he realised, to go among them.
+Their attitude was threatening.  He had had experience of the native
+when he was out of control.  Lacking in discipline and all sense of
+responsibility, and with an utter disregard for consequences, he was a
+difficult proposition to tackle.
+
+Hallam turned down a side street, which was silent and deserted, passed
+a number of warehouses, and came out upon the fringe of the crowd.  So
+far nothing had happened to fan the smouldering hate into a
+conflagration.  It needed only, the white man realised, the throwing of
+a missile or the random discharge of a firearm, to rouse the mob to a
+frenzy of murderous activity.  But so far the situation was in hand; the
+rioting came later.
+
+It was difficult to say who started it, from which direction came that
+first shot that turned the sea of black swaying figures into a frenzied
+rabble of monomaniacs with a common enemy, the white man, the ruler,
+who, terribly outclassed in numbers, yet held the coloured man at bay.
+They were there, behind the walls, a handful of white men, police and
+ex-soldiers, armed, determined, cool-headed, maintaining law and
+authority against the vast rabble of native insurgents.
+
+Hallam heard several shots fired; heard the yells of the mob; watched
+the ugly rush as it surged forward in one mighty wave of humanity.
+Sticks were wielded freely, stones and other missiles came into use; the
+noise swelled to pandemonium.  To remain in the streets was unsafe.  A
+white man would receive no quarter if the mob got hold of him.  Aware of
+his danger, Hallam turned to retreat; and, as he made for the side
+street down which he had come, the sound of a woman's scream arrested
+his attention.  He halted and looked round.  A white woman was
+struggling with a native a few yards from where he stood.  It was the
+work of a minute to reach her; the next, he had the native by the throat
+and was choking the life out of him.  The woman had fallen to the
+ground.  She might be hurt, or she might have fainted: Hallam did not
+pause to find out.  A couple of natives had seen them and were running
+towards them; if they came up with them, though he might succeed in
+shooting them, for he carried a revolver, it would bring the crowd upon
+them; and he and the woman he had rescued would inevitably perish.
+Stooping, he picked her up in his arms, and ran with her up the street,
+darting through the open door of a wool-shed, where he dropped her
+unceremoniously on a bale of hides and ran back to the door and secured
+it.
+
+But there was no sign without of their pursuers.  The chase of fugitive
+whites was less exciting than the bigger business in hand.  The street
+was quiet, and wore an air of desertion, as if every man had left his
+post for the scene of greater activity.
+
+Hallam turned from securing the door, and leaned with his shoulders
+against it, breathing hard, in quick short breaths.  With the abrupt
+shutting out of the sunlight the interior of the building appeared dark;
+the insufficient light, which penetrated through the dirty windows,
+revealed everything dimly, like objects seen in the dusk.  Neither
+Hallam nor the woman had spoken.  They did not speak now.  She was
+sitting up, looking about her with dazed eyes.  She put a hand over her
+eyes, as if to shut out the sight of the tall figure confronting her,
+uncovered them again, and looked straight into the eyes of the man, who
+stood with his shoulders against the door, watching her.
+
+He had recognised her when he stooped over her in the street to lift
+her; she had recognised him sooner.  But to her it had seemed that fear
+had deranged her reason; she believed that her imagination had given to
+her rescuer the features of some one whom she knew to be dead.  Now,
+while she watched him, listened to his deep breathing, conviction came
+to her that this was Paul himself, no creation of her fancy; and
+suddenly, while she looked at him, the room grew dark about her, his
+face faded in a mist, disappeared: she dropped back on the hides and lay
+still.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.
+
+As Hallam looked down on the white face, with the eyes closed, and the
+dark lashes resting on the colourless cheeks, there came back very
+vividly to his memory a picture of his wife lying senseless at the foot
+of the stairs, and the horror which had gripped his heart at the sight
+of her lying thus, the remorse and the self-accusation which had all but
+unhinged his reason.  In recalling these painful memories he felt his
+heart softening towards her; the jealousy which had embittered his
+thoughts of her yielded to the more generous instincts of love and a
+pitiful tenderness, which desired only to shield her from the distress
+and embarrassment of her position.
+
+Fate had resolved the point as to whether she should know of his return;
+the responsibility of decision had been lifted from his shoulders.  At
+least his presence had been the means of saving her from a dreadful and
+violent death.  It was horrible to contemplate what might have happened
+had he not been on the spot.
+
+Deliberately he moved away from the door and approached the unconscious
+figure lying on the pile of evil-smelling hides.  For a while he
+remained standing, looking down on the quiet form; then he took a seat
+on the hides and sat still and watched for a sign of returning
+consciousness.  As soon as she was equal to walking he meant to take her
+to Jim Bainbridge's office.  He was not satisfied of their safety while
+they remained where they were.
+
+Esme recovered from her faint to find him seated beside her, watching
+her with those keen eyes which seemed to search her soul.  She lay still
+for a while, staring back at him, too bewildered to realise at once
+where she was and what had happened.  Then abruptly memory came sweeping
+back in a confusing rush, and the events immediately preceding her swoon
+crowded into her mind.  She sat up; and the man and the woman looked
+steadily at one another.
+
+"Paul!" she whispered.
+
+"Esme!"
+
+Her eyes filled with tears.
+
+"Oh, my dear!  Oh, my dear!" she wailed.
+
+She broke down and cried uncontrollably.  He made no move to comfort
+her, or to attempt explanations; he let her cry; tears were more often a
+relief than otherwise.  And there was nothing he could find to say.
+There was nothing, it seemed to him, to be said.  Matters had reached a
+deadlock.  Here they were, husband and wife, together after long years
+of separation; and, dividing them more effectually than the years, was
+the fact of Esme's second marriage and the existence of her child.
+
+Presently she looked up at him through her tears with eyes that were
+infinitely sad, that held, too, in their look an expression of yearning
+tenderness for this man, whom she had loved in the past, whom she still
+loved better than any one in the world.  The sight of him brought back
+so many memories of the happiness which their great love for one another
+had put into their lives.  Why had she forgotten?  The memory of the
+beauty of their love should have satisfied her.  What had she done by
+forgetting so soon?
+
+"They told me you were dead," she said.
+
+"I know."
+
+"At first I wouldn't believe it.  But you sent no word, and the years
+passed...  Oh, my dear!  Oh, my dear!  Why did you leave me like that?--
+without a word or a sign from you all these years?"
+
+"I will explain later," he answered, speaking as calmly as his emotion
+permitted.  "For the present you must just believe that it wasn't
+altogether my fault.  I was ill for a long time after I left home.  It
+was touch and go.  If there is a purpose which governs our destinies, I
+suppose there was some reason why I should live.  Anyhow I pulled
+through with all the odds against me.  And again, when men were dying
+all about me, my life was preserved--I know not why, nor for what.  I
+have no place in the world.  I am just so much dust encumbering the
+earth.  My return is only a distress to you.  I come back to find you
+gone from me."
+
+She hid her face in her hands and wept afresh.  Gone from him!  That was
+how he saw it.  She had not been faithful to his memory even.
+
+"Tell me about yourself," she pleaded.  "I want you to fill in the
+blank.  I want to know where you've been--all about everything.  I don't
+understand.  Tell me."
+
+"Not now--nor here," he said, rising.  "It's a long story; and we should
+be moving out of this.  Can you walk as far as Jim's office?  I think we
+should be safer there."
+
+As though reminded by his caution of the disturbance in the streets,
+which the sight of him had driven temporarily from her thoughts, she
+stood up and remained in an attentive attitude, listening to the din,
+which penetrated to their quiet shelter with horrible distinctness.  Men
+were out there a few yards away, fighting and being injured, killed
+perhaps, as she might have been but for Paul.  She lifted frightened
+eyes to his face.
+
+"What is it?" she asked.  "What is happening?"
+
+"It's a riot," he answered.  "The gaol will be overfull as a result of
+this noisy disturbance.  I hope some of the brutes will get shot."
+
+"You saved my life, Paul," she said, looking at him gravely.
+
+He made no answer to that.  He went to the door and unfastened it and
+looked out into the street.  With the opening of the door the tumult
+seemed to swell in volume, but the street itself was quiet; there was no
+one within sight.  He turned to her swiftly and took hold of her arm and
+led her outside.
+
+"There is nothing to be nervous about," he said.  "We shan't meet a
+soul.  I came this way just before I saw you."
+
+None the less, he carried his revolver in his hand, and hurried her up
+the street, keeping a sharp look-out against surprise, until he got her
+safely to Bainbridge's office.  The room when they entered it was empty
+as when he had left it, and showed no sign of its owner having been
+there.
+
+Esme sat down, white and shaken, and leaned back in her chair without
+speaking.  A clerk came to the door and inquired whether he could do
+anything.  Her appearance, hatless and dishevelled and white, had struck
+him when she entered.  She asked for water; and he went away to fetch
+it.  Hallam took the glass from him when he returned with it and carried
+it to her himself.
+
+"Mrs Sinclair isn't hurt, I hope?" the clerk asked.
+
+"No," Hallam answered curtly; and the clerk withdrew.
+
+At the sound of her name, Esme's eyes sought Hallam's face.  She saw it
+harden, saw the lips compress themselves, as he turned with the glass in
+his hand and approached her chair.  She took the glass from him with a
+word of thanks, and drank the contents slowly, while he paced the carpet
+with long, uneasy strides, backwards and forwards, before the open
+window.
+
+"Paul," she asked suddenly, "have you seen Jim?"
+
+"I saw him yesterday," he answered, without pausing in his walk.
+
+"Yesterday!" she echoed, her thoughts reverting to the dinner party, and
+to the curious preoccupation of her brother-in-law's manner.  Jim had
+known yesterday that Paul was alive; and he had said nothing.
+
+"He told you--about me?" she said.
+
+"Yes--everything that matters."
+
+She put the glass down on the desk and stood up and confronted him.
+
+"What am I to do?" she wailed.  "Oh! what am I to do?"
+
+"That," he answered with surprising quietness, "is a question which no
+one can resolve but yourself.  It is for you to decide."
+
+"But I don't know what to do," she returned distressfully.  "I--Oh, dear
+heaven! what a terrible position to be placed in!"
+
+She wrung her hands and turned away from him and stood leaning against
+the frame of the window, where the warm fresh air poured in on her, and
+the distant sounds of the din in the streets came to her ears like
+something far off, something altogether outside her own concerns.  The
+horror of her encounter with the Kaffir was submerged, almost forgotten,
+in the bewilderment of Paul's return.  Paul knew of her second
+marriage--which was no marriage.  He must know, since he had spoken with
+Jim, of her child.  The child's future welfare was her chief concern.
+She resented the injury done to it as a deliberate wrong wrought through
+the agency of this man by his long absence, his inexplicable silence.
+She felt bitter when she thought of it.
+
+"Why did you leave me in ignorance of your whereabouts?" she asked.
+"Was it fair to treat me like that?  You had all my love, all my
+confidence.  Surely you might have trusted me!  Whatever you were doing,
+wherever you were, I should have understood.  I would have waited
+patiently.  I was prepared to wait after reading your letter.  I judged
+from it that you would not return to me until you were sure of yourself,
+even though it meant separation for all our lives.  But you could have
+let me know you were alive.  It was cruel to keep silent all these
+years."
+
+"Yes," he allowed; "had it been intentional it would have been."
+
+He joined her at the window, and stood opposite to her, observing her
+with a steady gaze which drew her eyes to his, held them: she remained
+looking back at him, listening to him, while he strove to make her
+understand the struggle and the despair of those silent years.
+
+He told her of his flight; of the unhinged state of his mind when he
+left home; of his physical condition which brought him to the verge of
+death; of how he would have died but for the care of a stranger--a poor
+white, who later robbed him, and was subsequently buried in his name.
+He told her of his slow recovery in a native hut; of the fierce craving
+for alcohol which assailed him as soon as he was able once more to get
+about.
+
+"I could not write to you then," he said.  "I felt unfit to breathe your
+name."
+
+He went on to speak of the journey to England, still with his vice in
+the ascendant.  He had given way to it in England.  His illness had
+sapped his will-power and he was at the mercy of his desires once more.
+Then came the war.  He joined up with the intention of making good.
+Until he had made good he was resolved that he would not write.
+
+The rest of the story, of his early capture and his ineffectual efforts
+to communicate with her, he described briefly.  He gave a detailed
+account of the period following his release; of his tedious
+convalescence; of his longing for her; of his time of probation, during
+which he tested his endurance until satisfied that he had won a final
+victory over himself.  He told of his voyage out; of his wish to break
+the news of his return to her himself.
+
+"It was unlikely that you believed me to be still alive," he said.  "And
+I did not want to give you a shock by writing when, by the exercise of a
+little patience, I could tell you all this, and--"
+
+He broke off abruptly.  In his imagination he had anticipated her
+gladness, had pictured their mutual joy in the reunion, when, with his
+arms about her, he would tell her the story of his absence, and with his
+kisses comfort her for the sorrow that was past.  This home-coming was
+so different from anything he had conceived.
+
+"I knew nothing of the finding of the body of a man supposed to be me,"
+he said.  "That was one of the unforeseen accidents of circumstance
+which create an aftermath of deplorable consequences.  We are the
+victims of circumstance.  It is useless to impute blame to any one.  The
+facts remain.  But for Jim's positive testimony you would not have
+re-married.  Without some proof of my death, you would have gone on
+hoping, I believe."
+
+"Paul!--Oh, Paul!" she sobbed, and held out her two hands towards him in
+a gesture of pathetic helplessness.
+
+He took them in his.  And abruptly with the feel of her hands in his,
+his reserve broke down; the hardness went out of his eyes.  He gathered
+her to him and kissed her and held her close in his embrace.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE.
+
+What were they to do?
+
+That was the question they asked each other as soon as they were able to
+collect their ideas and talk calmly.
+
+Hallam had put her into Jim Bainbridge's swivel-chair; and he sat on a
+corner of the writing-table, facing her, holding one of her hands in
+his.  It was become to him now a matter simply of doing what was best
+for her happiness.  Whatever she decided he resolved to abide by.  She
+was the more injured; the settlement of their future must lie in her
+hands.  His rights, his claim on her, which until now had held a
+paramount place in his thoughts, assumed an insignificance which
+rendered them negligible beside her supreme right to the direction of
+her own life.
+
+"I'll go, Esme,--I'll go now, if you wish it," he said,--"if it would
+make things easier for you."
+
+He felt her fingers close round his, and said no more about going.
+
+They sat hand in hand for a long while without speaking.  Presently she
+moved slightly and lifted her face to his, white and wrung with emotion,
+with the stain of much weeping disfiguring it; but the sweetness of her
+look, the pathos in the eyes which met his, made her face seem more
+beautiful to him than ever before.  He leaned over her and pressed his
+cheek to hers.
+
+"Paul," she whispered, "if it wasn't for--It breaks my heart when I
+think of George."
+
+Sharply, as though her words stung him, he drew back.
+
+"It's going to hurt him badly," she said.  "And my baby...  My poor
+little innocent baby!"
+
+Hallam had nothing to say to that.  The culminating disaster, the
+biggest and most appalling of the difficulties with which they were
+faced, was wrought by the existence of the child.  He sat, gripping her
+hand hard, speechless and immeasurably disconcerted.  What was there to
+say in face of her distress?
+
+"I can't think," she said.  "I'm all confused.  This changes everything.
+I don't know what to do.  I don't feel that I can go home.  I haven't
+got a home..."
+
+She reflected awhile.
+
+"George will have to be told.  That is the part which is going to hurt.
+I can't bear to think of it."
+
+"I'll tell him," Hallam said.
+
+"No; not you."
+
+She spoke with a sort of repressed vehemence, and drew her hand from
+his, and sat with it clenched on the desk in front of her, her face
+working painfully.
+
+"Oh! whatever made me do it?" she cried.  "Why was I not satisfied to
+live with my memories?  All this distress is of my making.  Why did I do
+it?"
+
+"God knows!" he returned with sudden bitterness.  "If you had died, your
+memory would have been sacred to me."
+
+He regretted having said that as soon as the words were spoken.  What
+right had he to reproach her for inconstancy?  It was easy for him to
+remain faithful in thought to the wife who had never given him a
+moment's pain.  She had suffered--he knew that she must have suffered a
+great deal--on his account; but her love had remained unchanged through
+all the disappointment and the weary years of waiting.  He held the
+foremost place in her heart.  He was still her husband, to whom she had
+given the best of her love.  She did not withdraw her heart from him.
+She wanted him, even as he wanted her: that assurance removed all doubt
+from his mind as to what they ought to do.  He meant to have her.
+
+He fell to talking quietly and reasonably about the situation.  It was
+useless to indulge in recrimination and self-reproach: they must take a
+common-sense view of their case and make the best of the difficulties.
+These were not insoluble after all.
+
+He was still talking, while Esme listened to him with an air of anxious
+attention, when Jim Bainbridge walked in.  From the clerk he had learned
+of the presence of his sister-in-law and of the stranger who had visited
+him on the previous day.  The cat was out of the bag now for good or
+ill: the business of keeping Paul Hallam's return secret had ceased to
+be any affair of his.  He had wanted to biff the fellow out of it; had
+trusted that Hallam would see the inexpediency of his resuscitation
+stunt and clear off before the news of his return got about.  And here
+they were, together--in his office!  He was jolly well in the soup this
+time.
+
+He came in looking harassed and startled, and stood inside the door,
+surveying them in a sort of worried amazement.  The appearance of his
+sister-in-law shocked him.  She looked as if she had been mixed up in
+the brawling in the streets; as if she had been rolled in the dust and
+badly hurt.  His eyes met hers, and read reproach in them as she got up
+from his chair and came towards him.
+
+"Jim, why didn't you tell me this last night?" she said.
+
+"I wouldn't have told you, ever, if I'd had my way," he answered, with
+the sulky manner of a man receiving an unmerited rebuke.  "How did you
+come to find one another?  If those blasted niggers hadn't started
+raising Cain over the arrest of their blackguardly leader, I'd have been
+in my place here.  Something always happens when I'm not on the spot.
+Well, you've settled what you're going to do, I suppose?  It's your show
+anyhow."
+
+The telephone bell rang at that moment and interrupted the train of his
+ideas.  He seated himself before his desk and took up the receiver.  His
+face was a study in expressions while he listened.
+
+"Hullo! ...  Yes.  She's here all right..."
+
+"It's George speaking," he looked up to remark for the general
+information.
+
+"Eh? ...  Oh! yes; there's been a devil of a shindy.  It's quieting down
+now.  I think we've seen the worst of it.  I hope it will serve to
+illustrate how absurdly inadequate our police force is.  They've done
+wonders.  There will be a few funerals over this.  One or two Europeans
+killed, worse luck! ...  You will? ...  Right!  We'll keep her with us
+until you turn up.  Good-bye."
+
+He rang off, and looked up at Esme with a wry face.
+
+"They've heard of the row; and George got the wind up about you.  He's
+motoring in later to fetch you.  How did you get through?  Were you
+roughly handled at all?"
+
+He surveyed the disorder of her hair, her torn and crumpled dress.  She
+looked as though she had been in the thick of the melee.  She nodded.
+
+"If Paul hadn't been near I should have been killed," she answered.
+"That was how we met.  I was on my way here when a Kaffir got hold of
+me.  Paul killed him."
+
+"Well!" he said, and sat back and stared from one to the other in
+astonished curiosity.  "I take it, that about settles it.  It
+establishes his claim anyway.  It seems like an act of Providence that
+he should be in the right spot at the right moment.  I'm not going
+against that."
+
+Hallam put out a hand and drew Esme to his side.
+
+"I'm not for allowing any man to interfere between us," he said in quiet
+authoritative tones.  "She's mine all right.  We're both agreed as to
+that."
+
+Jim Bainbridge smiled dryly.
+
+"So it seems.  Well, it's the right course, I've no doubt."
+
+He made a mental resolve that he would not be anywhere handy when the
+explanation with George took place.  Thank Heaven, a man had his club to
+retire to in these domestic crises!
+
+"You'd better not show up at the house," he observed to Hallam, "until
+we've broken the news to Rose.  Shocks aren't good for her.  I've had as
+much excitement as I care about for one day."
+
+Esme crossed to his chair and stood beside it, resting a hand on his
+shoulder.
+
+"There's one thing more, dear," she said, with brightly flushed cheeks,
+and eyes carefully averted from Hallam's.  "I want you to ring up George
+and ask him to bring baby and nurse in the car.  I am staying with you
+to-night."
+
+"The kid, eh!"
+
+Swiftly he glanced at Hallam.  Hallam remained rigid and said nothing.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.
+
+The whole world changed for Esme with the return of the husband she had
+mourned as dead.  But for her sorrow on George Sinclair's account, she
+could have found in her heart only room for rejoicing in the knowledge
+that Paul was alive and well instead, as she had been led to believe, of
+having died mysteriously and alone and been buried in a lonely grave.
+But the thought of George, of how this must hit him, haunted her
+distressfully.  It grieved her to have to hurt him; he was so altogether
+fine and good.  She felt like a cheat in relation to him.  It seemed to
+her that she had stolen his love, stolen everything he had to give; and
+now she was about to steal his child from him and leave him sad and
+alone.
+
+If only she had remained steadfast, and had refused to marry him!
+
+The thought of the child tormented her anew, the child who would never
+know a father's love.  Fortunately the baby was so young that these
+matters could be kept from her knowledge until it seemed expedient to
+reveal them to her.  Paul, however kind he might be, could never take a
+father's place.  Instinctively she realised that, though he accepted the
+position, he resented it keenly.  The knowledge that the child was
+Esme's and not his galled him sorely.  But from the moment when he was
+resolved to have his wife at all costs Hallam had made up his mind that
+the child would form a part of the new life.  Deep down in his soul he
+had a sort of perception that in this mental scourging lay his
+punishment and possibly his ultimate salvation.  He would be good to the
+child for the sake of the woman he loved, and who loved them both.
+
+He drove with Bainbridge and Esme to the top of the hill, where he left
+them and walked the few yards to his hotel.  The disturbance was over,
+and the rioters were in rapid retreat.  They swarmed over the Donkin
+Reserve on their way to the locations.  Many of them were injured, and,
+with the blood streaming from their wounds, presented a sufficiently
+unpleasant sight.  The taxi turned into Havelock Street and stopped
+before the house, the door of which was opened promptly, and Rose,
+looking concerned and curious, came out upon the step.  Her alarm
+increased when her eyes discovered Esme's dishevelled appearance.
+
+"Whatever's happened?" she asked, and put out a hand and caught her
+sister's arm.
+
+Bainbridge turned from paying the driver and followed them into the
+house.
+
+"Don't make a fuss," he said.  "She's upset."
+
+There were tears in Esme's eyes; she looked white and altogether
+unstrung.
+
+"There's been an accident?"  Rose said.
+
+"It came pretty near to being a fatal accident," Jim threw in helpfully.
+"One of those black devils got hold of her.  If it hadn't been for Paul
+she'd be as dead as mutton by now."
+
+"_What_?"  Rose ejaculated.
+
+"Paul's turned up," came the laconic information.  "Turned up in the
+nick of time too.  It seems he's been a prisoner of war.  Don't say
+anything now.  We are all feeling jumpy.  He's coming over in the
+morning."
+
+Rose gasped in her astonishment.  Her husband's jerked out sentences,
+his perturbed and bothered look, as much as her sister's evident
+agitation, kept her from putting the elucidatory questions which she
+longed to ask.  She could scarcely believe this startling news, so
+abruptly given; it seemed to her incredible that Paul Hallam should be
+alive, and coming there.  Gently she passed an arm about her sister's
+shoulders and spoke to her soothingly.
+
+"You poor dear!" was all she said.  "You poor dear!"
+
+Mary came running down the stairs, agog with excitement, and manifestly
+curious.  But at the foot of the stairs she halted abruptly, and
+surveyed the group in the hall in wide-eyed amaze.  Tactfully she
+disregarded Esme's tearful condition and confined her attention to the
+dilapidations of her attire.
+
+"You've been in the wars," she said.  "Come on up to my room; I'll rig
+you out."
+
+Jim Bainbridge, approving of his daughter's handling of an embarrassing
+situation, looked after the pair as they went arm in arm up the stairs;
+then, in answer to the question in his wife's eyes, he followed her into
+the sitting-room and entered into explanations.
+
+Rose took things more calmly than he had expected.  The shock of the
+news left her bewildered and curiously at a loss for words.  She found
+some difficulty in collecting her ideas.
+
+"I always said," she remarked once, "that it was ridiculous to swear so
+positively to a man's identity by the clothes he happened to be
+wearing."
+
+And after reflection she added simply:
+
+"Poor George!"
+
+Bainbridge's sympathies set strongly in the same direction.
+
+"That's how I felt about it when Paul walked into my office yesterday,"
+he observed.
+
+"Yesterday!" she repeated.  "You knew this yesterday?  Why didn't you
+tell me?"
+
+"For obvious reasons," he answered.  "I hoped when Paul heard of the
+second marriage he'd see the wisdom of clearing out.  But he didn't.  I
+wonder how I would have acted had it been my case?  Whether, if I had
+disappeared and returned to find you married again, I would have slipped
+away and left the other fellow in possession?  Largely, of course," he
+added reflectively, "it would depend on whether I wanted you.  _If_ I
+had wanted you all right, the other fellow would have had to quit.
+That's as plain as print anyway.  No doubt I gave Paul fairly rotten
+advice.  However he didn't take it; so there it is."
+
+"You are positively immoral," Rose exclaimed indignantly.  "There is no
+question about the matter at all.  They are man and wife."
+
+"I wasn't dealing in morality in offering my advice," he answered,
+grinning.  "I was thinking of the simplest way out of the difficulty."
+
+"The path of least resistance--yes," she said.  "And it didn't strike
+you that in shirking difficulties one makes others?  A fine crop of
+criminal complications you would have started.  Besides, Paul isn't a
+man to take advice."
+
+"No; he is not to be moved from his purpose once his mind is made up.
+Incidentally, he's rather a fine chap."
+
+"He drinks," she said.
+
+"I imagine he has learned control," he returned quickly.  "You are a
+little unfair in your judgment, aren't you?"
+
+"Perhaps I am," she allowed.  "I never liked him.  I resent his coming
+back and upsetting everything.  What a talk there'll be!"
+
+"Don't overlook the fact that he saved us a funeral in the family," he
+reminded her.  "You can't have it both ways.  I consider it was
+providential his being on the spot.  George stood to lose in either
+case."
+
+"I hope he will take your philosophic view of the matter," was all she
+returned.  Then she left him to his reflections and went away to see
+about a meal.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.
+
+It had been a day of varied experiences of big moments, fraught with
+terror and relief, joy and sorrow, inextricably interwoven.  The
+eventful day was followed by a night of correspondingly deep emotions, a
+night of painful revelation and much anguish of mind for Esme, as well
+as for the man who was to learn from the lips of the woman he loved, and
+whom he believed was his wife, that she had never been legally married
+to him, that her husband was alive, that she and the child, which was
+his, were leaving him finally.
+
+They talked late into the night, sitting opposite to one another, with a
+small table between them on which Rose had placed two cups of coffee,
+before she left them alone together, and went softly upstairs to take a
+look at the baby, asleep in its improvised cot.
+
+The little house was overcrowded that night, so that John was forced to
+sling a hammock on the balcony and sleep out in the open air.  It was
+also a very quiet house; a house in which every one walked softly and
+spoke in whispers and went about with concerned and anxious faces.  The
+master of the house stayed late at his club, and slipped in quietly on
+his return and crept past the sitting-room door and went softly upstairs
+to bed.
+
+And the man and the woman within the room talked on fragmentally,
+heedless of everything beyond the confines of those four walls which
+gave privacy to their interview, to the man's grief, and the woman's
+unutterable sympathy with his sorrow.
+
+George Sinclair sat forward in his seat, with his hands dropped between
+his knees, staring before him with blurred unseeing eyes.  Occasionally
+he beat the knuckles of one clenched hand softly with the palm of the
+other, with an action pitiful to watch, suggesting, as it did, intense
+emotion hardly repressed.  He did not say much.  The situation had gone
+beyond words.  He sat there, tense and quiet, trying to grasp the fact
+that she was not his wife, never had been his wife, that their married
+life had been a sham.  And now he had to give way.  There was no course
+left to him but to pass out of her life altogether.  And he loved her,
+worshipped her.  Life without her would be entirely blank.  He could not
+realise living without her.  To know that she was in the world somewhere
+and that he must not see her, speak to her, touch her ever again after
+to-day...
+
+The thought was torture.  It was also fantastically unreal.  He felt
+like a man in a dream, faced by an absurdly impossible situation, which
+was nevertheless distressing and horrible, which he believed would fade
+if he could only wake.  But he could not wake; and the dream became more
+real, more terribly convincing with every passing moment.
+
+Why, in the name of reason, had he not been shot in France and thus
+saved this refinement of torture?  It would have spared Esme unnecessary
+suffering also.  It seemed monstrous that through his love for her he
+should hurt her, that by their marriage they should have all
+unconsciously injured one another grievously.  Wherever she might be,
+however happy she was in her love for Paul and for her child, always
+there must linger in her mind a regret when she thought of him alone
+with his memories of his brief happiness and his enduring sorrow.
+
+"Don't reproach yourself," he said, once, looking up in response to
+something she said in self-condemnation, and meeting her saddened eyes
+fully.  "The trouble is none of your making.  I don't see that you are
+to blame anyway.  I worried you into it.  You know,"--he leaned towards
+her and took hold of her hands where they lay along the table,--"I can't
+regret our marriage, Esme.  It's been a wonderful time.  It's something
+to remember when--when I've nothing else left of you.  If it wasn't that
+I know you love Paul better than ever you loved me, I'd not give you up.
+But the law and your happiness are both on one side.  I'm out of the
+picture altogether."
+
+She made no reply.  She felt that it would not be kindness to urge on
+him then how much she cared for him.  She loved him, not as she loved
+Paul, but with a strong and tender affection that would keep his memory
+warm and vivid in her thoughts always.
+
+"I shall never forget you--the sweetness and the dearness of you," he
+added.  "It's a big blow, Esme, to be forced apart now.  Dear, I don't
+know how I'll stand it...  No matter; we won't think of that part of it.
+One gets used to most things, I imagine."
+
+He was silent again for a while.  He had released her hands and returned
+to his former attitude, and to his action of beating one hand upon the
+other.  Esme watched him, biting her lip to stop its trembling, and with
+difficulty holding back her tears.  What could she do, what could she
+say, in face of this misery which she was powerless to avert?
+
+Presently she rose from her seat, and went to him, and kneeled on the
+carpet beside him, and put her hands over his hands to quiet their
+painful movement.
+
+"George," she said softly, "it stabs me to the heart to see you grieve
+so.  What can I say?  You've been so good to me.  I love you for your
+goodness.  I'll remember you with gratitude every day--every hour of
+every day, so long as I live.  My dear boy! my dear boy!  I can't bear
+it when you look so sad."
+
+She was sobbing now, sobbing and choking with emotion.  He took her face
+between his hands and smiled at her, with a smile that was infinitely
+sadder than tears, and bent forward and kissed her gently.
+
+"Poor, weary little woman!" he said.  "That white face, with its tired
+eyes, ought to be on the pillow.  Come upstairs, and let me take a look
+at the baby before I go."
+
+He helped her on to her feet; and, hand in hand, softly and in silence,
+they went upstairs and stood side by side looking down on the
+unconscious beauty of their sleeping child.
+
+"She forms a link," he said.  "When her blue eyes look into your eyes,
+you'll remember."
+
+He bent down and laid his hand over the baby hands and kissed the soft
+cheek.
+
+"I'll miss her," he said; and straightened himself and turned away from
+the cot abruptly.
+
+Esme followed him to the door.
+
+"No; don't come down.  We'll part here.  I can let myself out."
+
+He took her by the shoulders and held her a little way off, looking at
+her long and earnestly as though he wished to impress her features on
+his memory for ever.
+
+"Some time in the far off future we may meet again," he said.  "God
+knows.  Anyhow, you will live always in my heart.  Good-bye, and God
+bless you."
+
+His hands slipped to the back of her shoulders, drew her to him, held
+her.  She lifted her face to his; and in the dimly lit room where the
+baby slept, and where the man was to part from both wife and child, they
+clung together and kissed for the last time, not as lovers, but solemnly
+and tenderly, as dear friends embrace, knowing they may never meet
+again.  Then the man went swiftly down the stairs and let himself
+quietly out of the house.
+
+Book 4--CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.
+
+Sleep was long in coming to Esme that night.
+
+She lay in the little bed in the room where, as a girl, she had slept
+soundly in the untroubled days before love had entered into her life,
+lay wide-eyed in the hot stillness, with the heavy scent of the oleander
+stealing into the room, perfuming the night, filling the little garden
+and the surrounding air with its sweetness, bringing back with its
+familiar fragrance a rush of memories, shy sweet memories of the days
+when Paul was her lover and she slept with his letters beneath her
+pillow and sometimes dreamed of him.
+
+So much had happened since those care-free days to change her, to alter
+all her views of life, that the girl who had slept there before seemed
+almost a stranger to her.  One quality they shared in common; there was
+one flaming harmony across their sky amid the wind-swept clouds of
+discontent and passing griefs and early intolerances, love.  The girl
+had lain there and dreamed of love, and felt love aglow in her heart;
+the woman lay there with heart and brain filled with love--compassionate
+love, deep and tender and protective in quality--for her husband, for
+the man who loved her as a husband, and for the small life which God had
+given her to complete her world.
+
+These three lives, so intimately and closely associated with her own,
+asserted each its separate claim.  Never could she forget, or cease to
+think kindly and with grateful heart, of the man who was the father of
+her child.  She would love the child more tenderly through her undying
+affection for George Sinclair.  The child forged a link, as he had said,
+between them for all time.
+
+But above and beyond everything, like a sun set in the sky amid the
+lesser luminaries, shone her love for Paul Hallam; a great white flame
+of love that made the crown and glory of her life.
+
+As she thought of Paul, of his struggle and his suffering, her tears
+fell freely.  His claim was stronger than the other claims, his need of
+her the greater.
+
+With the dawn her mind became more tranquil, less feverishly alert; the
+curtain of formless thoughts, of futile striving to understand, hung
+away from her weary brain; and sleep came to her, calm and peaceful
+sleep, blotting out the sorrows and the joys which go to the making of
+every life.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Stronger Influence, by F.E. Mills Young
+
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