to the
eye than such a quiet fellow as young Lennan, whose features were rather
anyhow, though pleasant enough, and with a nice smile--the sort of young
man one could not help liking, and who certainly would never hurt a fly!
And suddenly there came the thought: Why should he not go to young Lennan
and put it to him straight? That he was in love with Olive? Not
quite--but the way to do it would come to him. He brooded long over this
idea, and spoke of it to Mrs. Ercott, while shaving, the next morning.
Her answer: "My dear John, bosh!" removed his last doubt.

Without saying where he was going, he strolled out the moment after
breakfast--and took a train to Beaulieu. At the young man's hotel he
sent in his card, and was told that this Monsieur had already gone out
for the day. His mood of marching straight up to the guns thus checked,
he was left pensive and distraught. Not having seen Beaulieu (they spoke
of it then as a coming place), he made his way up an incline. That whole
hillside was covered with rose-trees. Thousands of these flowers were
starring the lower air, and the strewn petals of blown and fallen roses
covered the light soil. The Colonel put his nose to blossoms here and
there, but they had little scent, as if they knew that the season was
already over. A few blue-bloused peasants were still busy among them.
And suddenly he came on young Lennan himself, sitting on a stone and
dabbing away with his fingers at a lump of putty stuff. The Colonel
hesitated. Apart from obvious reasons for discomfiture, he had that
feeling towards Art common to so many of his caste. It was not work, of
course, but it was very clever--a mystery to him how anyone could do it!
On seeing him, Lennan had risen, dropping his handkerchief over what he
was modelling--but not before the Colonel had received a dim impression
of something familiar. The young man was very red--the Colonel, too, was
conscious suddenly of the heat. He held out his hand.

"Nice quiet place this," he stammered; "never seen it before. I called
at your hotel."

Now that he had his chance, he was completely at a loss. The sight of
the face emerging from that lump of 'putty stuff' had quite unnerved him.
The notion of this young man working at it up here all by himself, just
because he was away an hour or two from the original, touched him. How
on earth to say what he had come to say? It was altogether different
from what he had thought. And it s