t memory is a matter of will and cultivation. There is no
curtain so opaque as that which drops between the mind of man and the
thing it is advantageous to forget. But how closely does the ear of
self-service listen for the footfall of a most distant memory, when to
do so is to share even a reflected glory!

A week had gone since Philip had landed on the island. Memories pursued
him. If he came by the shore of St. Clement's Bay, he saw the spot where
he had stood with her the evening he married her, and she said to him:
"Philip, I wonder what we will think of this day a year from now!...
To-day is everything to you, but to-morrow is very much to me." He
remembered Shoreham sitting upon the cromlech above singing the legend
of the gui-l'annee--and Shoreham was lying now a hundred fathoms deep.

As he walked through the Vier Marchi with his officers, there flashed
before his eyes the scene of sixteen years ago, when, through the grime
and havoc of battle, he had run to save Guida from the scimitar of the
garish Turk. Walking through the Place du Vier Prison, he recalled the
morning when he had rescued Ranulph from the hands of the mob. Where was
Ranulph now?

If he had but known it, that very morning as he passed Mattingley's
house Ranulph had looked down at him with infinite scorn and
loathing--but with triumph too, for the Chevalier had just shown him a
certain page in a certain parish-register long lost, left with him by
Carterette Mattingley. Philip knew naught of Ranulph save the story
babbled by the islanders. He cared to hear of no one but Guida, and who
was now to mention her name to him? It was long--so long since he had
seen her face. How many years ago was it? Only five, and yet it seemed
twenty.

He was a boy then; now his hair was streaked with grey. He was
light-hearted then, and he was still buoyant with his fellows, still
alert and vigorous, quick of speech and keen of humour--but only before
the world. In his own home he was fitful of mood, impatient of the
grave, meditative look of his wife, of her resolute tenacity of thought
and purpose, of her unvarying evenness of mood, through which no warmth
played. It seemed to him that if she had defied him--given him petulance
for petulance, impatience for impatience, it would have been easier
to bear. If--if he could only read behind those passionless eyes, that
clear, unwrinkled forehead! But he knew her no better now than he did
the day he married her. Un