or she did or said they would meet in the
future only as ghosts may meet in shadowy converse and meaningless
communion.

"You will be glad to see me when I come back?" he asked.

"Why, my dearest, of course I shall be glad!"

He kissed her good-by, but her kiss was neither the kiss of lover nor of
sister, but such a kiss as ghosts may use, seeking to perpetuate the
mere form and outward semblance of life lost irrevocably.

When Guy was driving with Godbold along the Shipcot road he had not made
up his mind where he would go, and it was on the spur of the moment, as
he stood in the booking-office, that he decided to go and see his
father, to whom latterly he had written scarcely at all, and of whom he
suddenly thought with affection.

"I've settled to give up Plashers Mead," Guy told him that night, when
they were sitting in the library at Fox Hall. "And try and get on the
staff of a paper," he added to his father's faint bow. "Or possibly I
may go to Persia as Sir George Gascony's secretary. My friend Comeragh
got me the offer in March, but Sir George was ill and did not start."

"That sounds much more sensible than journalism," said Mr. Hazlewood.

"Yes, perhaps it would be better," Guy agreed. "But then, of course,
there is the question of leaving Pauline for two years."

Yet even as he enunciated this so solemnly, he knew in his heart that he
would be rather glad to postpone for two years all the vexations of
love.

His father shrugged his shoulders.

"My poems are coming out this Autumn," Guy volunteered.

His father gave some answer of conventional approbation, and Guy without
the least bitterness recognized that to his father the offer of the
secretaryship had naturally presented itself as the more important
occasion.

"If you want any help with your outfit...."

"Oh, you mustn't count on Persia," interrupted Guy. "But I'll go up to
town to-morrow and ask Comeragh when Sir George is going."

Next day, however, when Guy was in the train, he began to consider his
Persian plan a grave disloyalty to Pauline. He wondered how last night
he had come to think of it again, and fancied it might have been merely
an instinct to gratify his father after their coolness. Of course, he
would not dream of going, really, and yet it would have been jolly. Yes,
it would certainly have been jolly, and he was rather relieved to find
that Comeragh was out of town for a week, for his presence might have
been a temptation