chair, and lit a
cigarette, shielding it with his hand so that she would not see it,
recognize in its triviality his detachment. A wave of weariness swept over
him; the night was like a blanket on the land. Minutes passed without her
return; soon he would go in search of her; he would find her ... in the
dark house.... He shut his eyes for a moment, and opened them with an
effort. The whippoorwills never for a moment ceased their melancholy
calling; they seemed to draw nearer to him; then retreat, far away. His
head fell forward upon his breast.

Lettice Hollidew! little fool; but what was that beyond her, blacker than
night?

He stirred, sat up sharply, his eyes dazzled by a blaze of intolerable
brilliancy. It was the sun, a full two hours above the horizon. He had
slept through the night. His muscles were cramped, his neck ached
intolerably. He rose with a painful effort and something fell to the
floor. It was a rose, wilted, its fragrance fled. He realized that Lettice
had laid it on his knee, last night, when the bud had been fresh. He had
slept while she stood above him, while the rose had faded. On the step the
fish lay, no longer brightly colored, in a dull, stiff heap. The house was
still; through the open door the sun fell on a strip of rag rug. He turned
and hurried down the steps, unlatched the gate, and almost ran across the
fields to the cover of a wood, fleeing from an unsupportably humiliating
vision.

XXV

He made his way to where Greenstream village lay somnolent beneath the
refulgent day. The chairs before the office of the _Bugle_ were
unoccupied, from within came the monotonous, sliding rattle of the small
footpress. Gordon sat absently revolving the possibilities held out by the
near future. Hay, he knew was still being made in the valley, but the
prospect of long, arduous, days in the open fields, in the hot, dry chaff
of the sere grass, was forbidding. He might take his gun and a few
personal necessities and disappear into such wild as yet remained,
contracting steadily before the inexorable, smooth advance of
civilization. He was aware that he could manage a degree of comfort,
adequate food. But the thoughtless resiliency of sheer youth had deserted
him, the desire for mere, picturesque adventure had fled during the past,
comfortable years. He dismissed contemptuously the possibility of clerking
in a local store. There was that still in the Makimmon blood which balked
at measuring r