e with folded
arms, looking out across the sun-dappled sea. His matter-of-fact brain
offered him but one explanation as to the meaning of Hunterleys' words,
and against that explanation his whole being was in passionate revolt.
He represented a type of young man who possesses morals by reason of a
certain unsuspected idealism, mingled with perfect physical sanity. It
seemed to him, as he sat there, that he had been waiting for this day
for years. The old nights in New York and Paris and London floated
before his memory. He pushed them on one side with a shiver, and yet
with a curious feeling of exultation. He recalled a certain sensation
which had been drawn through his life like a thin golden thread, a
sensation which had a habit of especially asserting itself in the midst
of these youthful orgies, a curious sense of waiting for something to
happen, a sensation which had been responsible very often for what his
friends had looked upon as eccentricity. He knew now that this thing had
arrived, and everything else in life seemed to pale by the side of it.
Hunterleys' words had thrown him temporarily into a strange turmoil.
Solitude for a few moments he had felt to be entirely necessary. Yet
directly he was alone, directly he was free to listen to his
convictions, he could have laughed at that first mad surging of his
blood, the fierce, instinctive rebellion against the conclusion to which
Hunterleys' words seemed to point. Now that he was alone, he was not
even angry. No one else could possibly understand!

Before long he was once more upon his feet, starting out upon his quest
with renewed energy. He had scarcely taken a dozen steps, however, when
he came face to face with Lady Hunterleys and Mr. Draconmeyer. Quite
oblivious of the fact that they seemed inclined to avoid him, he greeted
them both with unusual warmth.

"Saw your husband just now, Lady Hunterleys," he remarked, a little
puzzled. "I fancied he said he was alone here."

She smiled.

"We did not come together," she explained; "in fact, our meeting was
almost accidental. Henry had been at Bordighera and San Remo and I came
out with Mr. and Mrs. Draconmeyer."

The young man nodded and turned towards Draconmeyer, who was standing a
little on one side as though anxious to proceed.

"Mr. Draconmeyer doesn't remember me, perhaps. I met him at my sister's,
Lady Weybourne's, just before Christmas."

"I remember you perfectly," Mr. Draconmeyer assured him cour