d.

And mostly he suffered from black loneliness, for he was a very lonely
man, and now he had lost that which he had thought he had. It is
difficult to divide suffering, difficult to say how much he suffered,
because, being in love with her, he had secretly thought she must love
him a little, and how much he suffered because his private portrait of
her, the portrait that he, and he alone, had painted, was scored through
with the knife. And he lay first on his face, and then on his back, with
his hand always over his eyes. And around him were other men lying on
the grass, and some were lonely, and some hungry, and some asleep, and
some were lying there for the pleasure of doing nothing and for the sake
of the hot sun on their cheeks; and by the side of some lay their girls,
and it was these that Gregory could not bear to see, for his spirit and
his senses were a-hungered. In the plantations close by were pigeons,
and never for a moment did they stop cooing; never did the blackbirds
cease their courting songs; the sun its hot, sweet burning; the clouds
above their love-chase in the sky. It was the day without a past,
without a future, when it is not good for man to be alone. And no man
looked at him, because it was no man's business, but a woman here and
there cast a glance on that long, tweed-suited figure with the hand over
the eyes, and wondered, perhaps, what was behind that hand. Had they but
known, they would have smiled their woman's smile that he should so have
mistaken one of their sex.

Gregory lay quite still, looking at the sky, and because he was a loyal
man he did not blame her, but slowly, very slowly, his spirit, like a
spring stretched to the point of breaking, came back upon itself, and
since he could not bear to see things as they were, he began again to see
them as they were not.

'She has been forced into this,' he thought. 'It is George Pendyce's
fault. To me she is, she must be, the same!'

He turned again on to his face. And a small dog who had lost its master
sniffed at his boots, and sat down a little way off, to wait till Gregory
could do something for him, because he smelled that he was that sort of
man.

CHAPTER VII

DOUBTFUL POSITION AT WORSTED SKEYNES

Then George's answer came at last, the flags were in full bloom round the
Scotch garden at Worsted Skeynes. They grew in masses and of all shades,
from deep purple to pale grey, and their scent, very penetrating, very