. Why?'

Three days later, leaving Gyp with his sister, he went back to Mildenham
to start the necessary alterations in the cottages. He had told no one
he was coming, and walked up from the station on a perfect June day,
bright and hot. When he turned through the drive gate, into the
beech-tree avenue, the leaf-shadows were thick on the ground, with golden
gleams of the invincible sunlight thrusting their way through. The grey
boles, the vivid green leaves, those glistening sun-shafts through the
shade entranced him, coming from the dusty road. Down in the very middle
of the avenue, a small, white figure was standing, as if looking out for
him. He heard a shrill shout.

"Oh, Grandy, you've come back--you've come back! What FUN!"

Winton took her curls in his hand, and, looking into her face, said:

"Well, my gipsy-bird, will you give me one of these?"

Little Gyp looked at him with flying eyes, and, hugging his legs,
answered furiously:

"Yes; because I love you. PULL!" "Yes; because I love you. PULL!"

THE END.

VILLA RUBEIN

Contents:
Villa Rubein
A Man of Devon
A Knight
Salvation of a Forsyte
The Silence

VILLA RUBEIN

PREFACE

Writing not long ago to my oldest literary friend, I expressed in a
moment of heedless sentiment the wish that we might have again one of our
talks of long-past days, over the purposes and methods of our art. And
my friend, wiser than I, as he has always been, replied with this
doubting phrase "Could we recapture the zest of that old time?"

I would not like to believe that our faith in the value of imaginative
art has diminished, that we think it less worth while to struggle for
glimpses of truth and for the words which may pass them on to other eyes;
or that we can no longer discern the star we tried to follow; but I do
fear, with him, that half a lifetime of endeavour has dulled the
exuberance which kept one up till morning discussing the ways and means
of aesthetic achievement. We have discovered, perhaps with a certain
finality, that by no talk can a writer add a cubit to his stature, or
change the temperament which moulds and colours the vision of life he
sets before the few who will pause to look at it. And so--the rest is
silence, and what of work we may still do will be done in that dogged
muteness which is the lot of advancing years.

Other times, other men and modes, but not other truth. Truth, though
essentially