of
taking up your residence at Hatton Towers?"

Paul made a gesture of indecision. "It is a lovely old place," he said;
"but I feel that I need to be in touch with the pulse of life, if I am
to diagnose its ailments. Latterly London has become distasteful to me;
it seems like a huge mirror reflecting all the horrors, the shams, the
vices of the poor scarred world. To retire to Hatton in the
companionship of Yvonne would be delightful, but would also be
desertion. No idle chance brought us together to-day, Don; it was that
Kismet to which the Arab ascribes every act of life. I was hesitating on
a brink; you pushed me over; and at this very hour I am falling into the
arms of Fate. I believe it is my appointed task to sow the seed of
truth; a mighty task, but because at last I realise its dimensions I
begin to have confidence that I may succeed."

Don stood still in the road, facing Paul. "Choose your seed with care,
Paul, for generations yet unborn will eat of its fruit."

V

Paul Mario dined alone in the small breakfast-room overlooking the
sloping lawns, waited upon by Davison, the late Sir Jacques' butler, a
useful but melancholy servant, having the demeanour of a churchwarden
and a habit of glancing rapidly under tables and chairs as though he had
mislaid a cassock or a Book of Common Prayer. The huge, gloomy
dining-room oppressed the new owner of Hatton Towers, being laden with
the atmosphere of a Primitive Methodist Sunday School.

Sir Jacques had been Paul's maternal uncle, and Paul had often wondered
if there could have been anything in common between his mother--whom he
had never known--and this smug Pharisee. His father, who had died whilst
Paul was at Oxford, had rarely spoken of Paul's mother; but Paul had
chanced to overhear an old clubman refer to her as having possessed "the
most fascinating ankles in London." The remark had confirmed his earlier
impression that his mother had been a joyous butterfly. For his father,
a profound but sombre scholar, he cherished a reverence which was almost
Roman in its character. His portrait in oils occupied the place of
honour in Paul's study, and figuratively it was a shrine before which
there ever burned the fires of a deathless love and admiration.

* * * * *

Paul's acute response to environment rendered him ill at ease in Hatton
Towers. The legacy embarrassed him. He hated to be so deeply indebted to
a man he could never repay