in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been
wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
the blue. He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
of London off his soul.

For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--for his
curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday since
the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his brother's
home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the avenue.
Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century in Ceylon.
Dear old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his elder brother, whose
burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a Bengal tiger; the
kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes, he had found a perfect home for
Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed. He too had once had a
perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose death, fifteen years
ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their two daughters, Gratian and
Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like his own mother, and
Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded him of his cousin
Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her life, and now, he
had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa. Ah! What a pretty
girl she had been!

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly in
the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
whose arms she was gliding along looked fiery hot; a handsome boy, with
blue eyes and a little golden down on the upper lip of his sunny
red-cheeked face. Edward Pierson thought: 'Nice couple!' And had a
moment's vision of himself and Leila, dancing at that long-ago Cambridge
May Week--on her seventeenth birthday, he remembered, so that she must
have been a year younger than Nollie was now! This would be the young
man she had talke