uddenly flashed through him--Dolly was
right! She's always right--hang it!

"You're busy," he said; "I mustn't interrupt you."

"Not at all, sir. It was awfully good of you to look me up."

The Colonel stared. There was something about young Lennan that he had
not noticed before; a 'Don't take liberties with me!' look that made
things difficult. But still he lingered, staring wistfully at the young
man, who stood waiting with such politeness. Then a safe question shot
into his mind:

"Ah! And when do you go back to England? We're off on Tuesday."

While he spoke, a puff of wind lifted the handkerchief from the modelled
face. Would the young fellow put it back? He did not. And the Colonel
thought:

"It would have been bad form. He knew I wouldn't take advantage. Yes!
He's a gentleman!"

Lifting his hand to the salute, he said: "Well, I must be getting back.
See you at dinner perhaps?" And turning on his heel he marched away.

The remembrance of that face in the 'putty stuff' up there by the side of
the road accompanied him home. It was bad--it was serious! And the sense
that he counted for nothing in all of it grew and grew in him. He told
no one of where he had been. . . .

When the Colonel turned with ceremony and left him, Lennan sat down again
on the flat stone, took up his 'putty stuff,' and presently effaced that
image. He sat still a long time, to all appearance watching the little
blue butterflies playing round the red and tawny roses. Then his fingers
began to work, feverishly shaping a head; not of a man, not of a beast,
but a sort of horned, heavy mingling of the two. There was something
frenetic in the movement of those rather short, blunt-ended fingers, as
though they were strangling the thing they were creating.

VIII

In those days, such as had served their country travelled, as befitted
Spartans, in ordinary first-class carriages, and woke in the morning at
La Roche or some strange-sounding place, for paler coffee and the pale
brioche. So it was with Colonel and Mrs. Ercott and their niece,
accompanied by books they did not read, viands they did not eat, and one
somnolent Irishman returning from the East. In the disposition of legs
there was the usual difficulty, no one quite liking to put them up, and
all ultimately doing so, save Olive. More than once during that night
the Colonel, lying on the seat opposite, awoke and saw her sitting,
withdrawn into her corner, with ey