he was this morning the more manly and altogether fit. But Jeff
was not going to ingratiate himself.

"Father," said he, "I've got to get out."

Trouble of a wistful sort sprang into the colonel's face. But he spoke
with a reasonable mildness, desirous chiefly of meeting his boy half
way.

"You said so. But not yet, I hope."

"At once," said Jeffrey. "I am going at once. To-day perhaps. To-morrow
anyway. I've simply got to get away."

The colonel, rather impatiently, because his voice would tremble, asked
as Lydia had done:

"Have you seen Esther?"

This Jeff found unreasonably irritating. Bitter as the sight of her had
been and unspeakable her repudiation, he felt to-day as if they did not
pertain. The thing that did pertain with a biting force was to remove
himself before innocent young sisterly girls idealised him to their
harm. But he answered, and not too ungraciously:

"Yes, I've seen Esther. But that's nothing to do with it. Esther
is--what she's always been. Only I've got to get away."

The colonel, from long brooding over him, had a patience comparable only
to a mother's. He was bitterly hurt. He could not understand. But he
could at least attain the only grace possible and pretend to understand.
So he answered with a perfect gentleness:

"I see, Jeff, I see. But I wish you could find it possible to put it
off--till the end of the week, say."

"Very well," said Jeff, in a curt concession, "the end of this week."

He got up and went out of the room and the house, and the colonel,
turning to look, saw him striding down the slope to the river. Then the
elder man's hands began to tremble, and he sat pathetically subject to
the seizure. Anne, if she had found him, would have known the name of
the thing that had settled upon him. She would have called it a nervous
chill. But to him it was one of the little ways of his predestined mate,
old age. And presently, sitting there ignominiously shuddering, he began
to be amused at himself, for he had a pretty sense of humour, and to
understand himself better than he had before. Face to face with this
ironic weakness, he saw beyond the physiologic aspect of it, the more
deeply into his soul. The colonel had been perfectly sure that he had
taken exquisite care of himself, these last years, because he desired to
see his son again, and also because Jeff, while suffering penalty, must
be spared the pain of bereavement. So he had formed a habit, and now it
was his m