-not in distrusting his honour, but in offending it.
It was in the clash of class, after all, that their theories had
crumbled. He might come back to her again--she might go forth to meet
him--but the bloom had gone from their dreams--in the reunion she saw
neither permanence nor abiding. The strongest of her instincts--the one
that made for the blood she bore--had quivered beneath the onslaught of
his accusation, but had not bent. Wherever and whenever the struggle
came she stood, as the Battles had always stood, for the clan. Be it
right or wrong, true or false, it was hers and she was on its side.

As she went beneath the great cedars, their long branches brushed her
face, like the remembering touch of familiar fingers, and she put up her
cheek to them as if they were sentient things. Long ago they had soothed
her as a troubled child, and now their caresses cooled her fever.
Underfoot she felt the ancient carpet they had spread throughout the
century--and it smoothed the way for her heavy feet. She was in the
state of subjective passiveness when the consciousness of external
objects alone seems awake. She felt a tenderness for the twisted box
bushes she brushed in passing, a vague pity for a sickly moth that flew
into her face; but for herself she was without pity or tenderness--she
had not brought her mind to bear upon her own hurt.

Indoors she found the family at supper. The general, hearing her step,
called her to her seat and gave her the brownest chicken breast in the
dish before him. Miss Chris offered her the contents of the cream jug,
and Congo plied her with Aunt Verbeny's lightest waffles; but the food
choked her and she could not eat. A lump rose in her throat, and she saw
the kindly, accustomed faces through a gathering mist. She regarded each
with a certain intentness, a peculiar feeling that there were hidden
traits in the commonplace features which she had never seen before--a
complexity in the benign candour of Miss Chris's countenance, in the
overwrought youthfulness of Bernard's, in the apoplectic credulity of
the general's. Familiar as they were, it seemed to her that there were
latent possibilities--obscure tendencies, which were revealed to her now
with microscopic exaggeration.

The general put his hand to her forehead and smoothed back the moist
hair.

"Ain't you well, daughter?" he asked anxiously. "Would you like a
toddy?"

"It's nothing," said Miss Chris cheerfully. "She's walked too f