to her face without flinching. The upward
look, for one second, had shaken him, but the iron control held good,
and before he left them he had spoken to her and looked at her with
perfect calmness. The visit had been quite as he wished it, and for a
few seconds, striding into the dark, he congratulated himself upon
having so satisfactorily coped with a situation that had threatened to
be a little difficult and had disturbed him so in the afternoon. Of
course, she wasn't really like Joan, except in a very general way.
Just her height and figure and graceful movements and colouring; and,
of course, the upward glance from confiding, thoughtful, blue-grey
eyes that had humour lurking in them, and power and possibilities, and
were so curiously framed in dark lashes in spite of light hair. In the
midst of his self-congratulation he remembered the upward look again,
and all in a moment once more it shook him. His gaze went blindly to
the stars, and his mind flew back. Ah! how sweet Joan had been; how
strong, how true! How she had stood by him through the beginning of
the storm, turning the clouds to sunshine, making everything worth
while! And then, the swift tragedy, the climax; the awful, awful days
and nights that followed. How he had trodden the lonely Devon moors,
blindly, passionately seeking a dead weariness of body that would dull
his mind! How he had cursed the two men who drove in the final barb,
and vowed never to see their faces again!

And then the little note-book he had found, in which Joan had
inscribed some of her thoughts from time to time, and copied a few
favourite passages from favourite authors! It had come to him like a
voice from the dead--Joan's voice, calling to him to rise above his
despair and prove himself still worthy of her. And out there on the
moors at sunrise he had vowed that he would. Calmly, coldly, as an
austere monk, he had laid down for ever the things that had made his
life gay and joyous before, and prepared to turn his back on England
and all that it held pertaining to him.

And now there is a distant wilderness and great southern stars, and
mysterious, antique ruins, and a man who has grown strong and silent
in aloofness, and won a sort of soothing content out of what he has
given, seeking no reward.

Not, perhaps, that "renewing" a royal friend had spoken of fifteen
years ago, for the contentment was void of hope and fear and joy, but
balm upon the passionate, frantic bitterness