n his wont, of
this or that improvement needed by the farms, pointing out to him a
meadow in the hollow beneath which might soon be coming into the market,
and always ending up with the same plea.

"Isn't it time, Hilary, that you married and came home to look after it
all yourself?"

Chayne had turned a deaf ear to that plea, but it made its appeal to him
to-night. Wherever his eyes rested, he recaptured something of his
boyhood; the country-side was alive with memories. He looked south, and
remembered how the perished cities of history had acquired reality for
him by taking on the aspect of Chichester lying low there on the flats;
and how the spires of the fabled towns of his storybooks had caught the
light of the setting sun, just as did now the towers of the cathedral.
Eastward, in the dip between the shoulder of the downs, and the trees of
Arundel Park, a long black hedge stood out with a remarkable definition
against the sky--the hedge of which he had spoken to Sylvia--the great
dark wall of brambles guarding the precincts of the Sleeping Beauty. He
recalled the adventurous day when he had first ridden alone upon his pony
along the great back of the downs and had come down to it through a
sylvan country of silence and ferns and open spaces; and had discovered
it to be no more than a hedge waist-high. The dusk came upon him as he
loitered in that solitary garden; the lights shone out in cottage and
farm-house; and more closely still his memories crowded about him weaving
spells. Some one to share them with! Chayne had no need to wait for old
age before he learnt the wisdom of Michel Revailloud. For his heart
leaped now, as he dreamed of exploring once more with Sylvia at his side
the enchanted country of his boyhood; gallops in the quiet summer
mornings along that still visible track across the downs, by which the
Roman legions had marched in the old days from London straight as a die
to Chichester; winter days with the hounds; a rush on windy afternoons in
a sloop-rigged boat down the Arun to Littlehampton. Chayne's heart leaped
with a passionate longing as he dreamed, and sank as he turned again to
the blank windows of the empty house.

He dined alone, and while he dined evoked Sylvia's presence at the
table, setting her, not at the far end, but at the side and close, so
that a hand might now and then touch hers; calling up into her face her
slow hesitating smile; seeing her still gray eyes grow tender; in a wo