irl. You belong to the clean hills and
the sweet green woods which I almost wish you had never left."

* * * * *

For long after the cab had passed around the corner Paul stood by the
archway staring in that direction, but presently he aroused himself and
returned to the courtyard. He tried the handle of James's door but
learned that the bolt remained fastened, whereupon he determined to
proceed to Thessaly's flat.

A definite change had taken place in the relations existing between
himself and Flamby. For all her wildness and her reckless behaviour,
that day she had appealed to him as something fragrantly innocent and
bewilderingly sweet. The memory of the Charleswood photographs had
assumed a different form, too, and he suddenly perceived possibilities
of an explanation which should exculpate the girl from a graver sin than
that of bravado. He had seen something in her eyes which had rendered
such an explanation necessary, had found there something stainless as
the heart of a wild rose. Devil-may-care was in her blood and he doubted
if she knew the meaning of fear, but for evil he now sought in vain and
wondered greatly because he had so misjudged her. He experienced a
passionate desire to protect her, to enfold her in careful guardianship.
He knew that he had not wanted to leave her at the gate of the studios,
but he had only recognised this to be the case at the very moment of
parting. He had never entertained an interest quite identical in anyone
and he sought to assure himself that it was thus that a father thought
of his child. He wondered if it had been her hair or her lips which had
maddened Orlando James; he wondered why she had been in the studio; and
a cold hatred of James took up a permanent place in his heart.

In the narrow thoroughfare connecting Victoria Street with that in which
Thessaly's flat was situated were a number of curious shops devoted to
the sale of church ornaments, altar candlesticks, lecterns, silk
banners, cassocks and birettas, statuettes of the Virgin, crucifixes and
rosaries. Paul stood before the window of one, reading the titles of the
books which were also displayed there, _Garden of the Soul, The Little
Flowers_ of St. Francis of Assisi. A phrase arose before him; he did not
seem to hear it but to see it dancing in smoky characters which
partially obscured a large ivory crucifix: "To shatter at a blow the
structure of the ages." He recalled that C