genuity Horace conjured up various pictures
from that Norman holiday of his: the little half-timbered cottages with
their faded blue shutters and the rushes growing out of their thatch
roofs; the spires of village churches gleaming above the bronze-green
beeches; the bold headlands, their ochre and yellow cliffs contrasting
grimly with the soft ridges of the turf above them; the tethered
black-and-white cattle grazing peacefully against a background of lapis
lazuli and malachite sea, and in every scene the sensation of Sylvia's
near presence, the sound of her voice in his ears. And now?... He looked
up from the papers and tracing-cloth on his desk, and round the small
panelled room which served him as an office, at the framed plans and
photographs, the set squares and T squares on the walls, and felt a dull
resentment against his surroundings. From his window he commanded a
cheerful view of a tall, mouldering wall, once part of the Abbey
boundaries, surmounted by _chevaux-de-frise_, above whose
rust-attenuated spikes some plane trees stretched their yellowing
branches.

"She would have come to care for me," Horace's thoughts ran on,
disjointedly. "I could have sworn that that last day of all--and her
people didn't seem to object to me. Her mother asked me cordially enough
to call on them when they were back in town. When I did----"

When he had called, there had been a difference--not an unusual sequel
to an acquaintanceship begun in a Continental watering-place. It was
difficult to define, but unmistakable--a certain formality and
constraint on Mrs. Futvoye's part, and even on Sylvia's, which seemed
intended to warn him that it is not every friendship that survives the
Channel passage. So he had gone away sore at heart, but fully
recognising that any advances in future must come from their side. They
might ask him to dinner, or at least to call again; but more than a
month had passed, and they had made no sign. No, it was all over; he
must consider himself dropped.

"After all," he told himself, with a short and anything but mirthful
laugh, "it's natural enough. Mrs. Futvoye has probably been making
inquiries about my professional prospects. It's better as it is. What
earthly chance have I got of marrying unless I can get work of my own?
It's all I can do to keep myself decently. I've no right to dream of
asking any one--to say nothing of Sylvia--to marry me. I should only be
rushing into temptation if I saw any mor