me, and to his love for
her he now clung, passionately, tenaciously, the one thing left to him
out of his great catastrophe.

She seemed, during these months, to have thought for nothing else in all
the world. She was not so useful in a sick room as Miss Rand--Miss Rand
was wonderful--but there were certain moments when she would bend down
and kiss him or would look at him or would take his hand, when he
wondered whether love for him had not crept into her heart after all.

Funny when he had gone out for his ride on that eventful morning
expecting that he had offended her for ever! Well, if his accident had
won Rachel for him, it had been worth while!

But there were other days when he knew for a certainty that it was not
so, knew that it was pity that moved her; affection too perhaps, but
nothing more than affection....

Nevertheless he hoped that this might be the beginning of something
else; he would lie for hours looking out at the park and creating
visions.

He made now something tolerable of his life. People showed a wonderful
kindness and there was always someone to entertain him, some new present
that someone had sent him; people could not be kind enough. He was
grateful for all of this, but he spent many, many hours in thinking. He
found that he had never thought before; he found that he would have gone
to his grave without thinking had not the great catastrophe occurred. He
thought of a great many things, but especially of what other people's
lives were like. There were, he supposed, a great number of people who
had had misfortunes as overwhelming at his--How had they behaved? And
what, after all, were all the other people, in all their different
circumstances, doing? Before this it had only occurred to him to be
interested in the people who were leading lives like his, now he
wondered about everybody.

Little things became of the greatest importance. Every day he read the
paper with absorbed care from the first line to the last. The
arrangement of the room interested him and he would give its details,
minutely, his consideration.

He was greatly interested in gossip and he would chatter, happily, all
the afternoon did someone come and visit him. To everyone it was an
amazing thing that he should take it all so easily. No one had ever
given Roddy credit for the strength of character that was in him and
they did not perhaps recognize that his earlier impatient condemnation
of other people--"Why the dev