an to be ready, anyway."

And Nedda got up. "Only, if he does something rash, don't let them hurt
him, Uncle John, if you can help it."

John felt her soft fingers squeezing his almost desperately, as if her
emotions had for the moment got out of hand. And he was moved, though he
knew that the squeeze expressed feeling for his nephew, not for himself.
When she slid away out of the big room all friendliness seemed to go out
with her, and very soon after he himself slipped away to the
smoking-room. There he was alone, and, lighting a cigar, because he
still had on his long-tailed coat which did not go with that pipe he
would so much have preferred, he stepped out of the French window into
the warm, dark night. He walked slowly in his evening pumps up a thin
path between columbines and peonies, late tulips, forget-me-nots, and
pansies peering up in the dark with queer, monkey faces. He had a love
for flowers, rather starved for a long time past, and, strangely, liked
to see them, not in the set and orderly masses that should seemingly have
gone with his character, but in wilder beds, where one never knew what
flower was coming next. Once or twice he stopped and bent down,
ascertaining which kind it was, living its little life down there, then
passed on in that mood of stammering thought which besets men of middle
age who walk at night--a mood caught between memory of aspirations spun
and over, and vision of aspirations that refuse to take shape. Why
should they, any more--what was the use? And turning down another path
he came on something rather taller than himself, that glowed in the
darkness as though a great moon, or some white round body, had floated to
within a few feet of the earth. Approaching, he saw it for what it
was--a little magnolia-tree in the full of its white blossoms. Those
clustering flower-stars, printed before him on the dark coat of the
night, produced in John more feeling than should have been caused by a
mere magnolia-tree; and he smoked somewhat furiously. Beauty, seeking
whom it should upset, seemed, like a girl, to stretch out arms and say:
"I am here!" And with a pang at heart, and a long ash on his cigar,
between lips that quivered oddly, John turned on his heel and retraced
his footsteps to the smoking-room. It was still deserted. Taking up a
Review, he opened it at an article on 'the Land,' and, fixing his eyes on
the first page, did not read it, but thought: 'That child! What fol