a's Prayer-book (he had never given it back to her), "I am the
Resurrection and the Life." He could find no parson to go with him.

On the way back to Albany he met the spring everywhere; it was just
before the Easter holidays. Overhead the clouds rolled across a
stainless sky, and they took ship-like forms to him and he felt a strong
wish to escape--to depart. Rainsford had set him free. It would be
months before he could hear from his competition. There was nothing in
this continent to keep him. He had come North full of living hope and
vital purpose, and meekly, solemnly, his graves had laid themselves out
around him, and he alone stood living.

Was there nothing to keep him?

Bella Carew.

He had, of all people in the world, possibly the least right to her. She
was his first cousin, nothing but a child; worth, the papers had said, a
million in her own right. The heiress of a man who despised him.

But her name was music still; music as yet too delicate, sweet as it
was, not to be drowned by the deeper, graver notes that were sounding
through Fairfax. There was a call to labour, there was the imperious
demand of his art. In him, something sang Glory, and if the other tones
meant struggle and battle, nevertheless his desire was all toward them.

BOOK III

THE VISIONS

CHAPTER I

The sea which he had just crossed lay gleaming behind him, every lovely
ripple washing the shores of a new continent.

The cliffs which he saw rising white in the sunlight were the Norman
cliffs. Beyond them the fields waved in the summer air and the June sky
spread blue over France.

As he stepped down from the gang-plank and touched French soil, he gazed
about him in delight.

The air was salt and indescribably sweet. The breeze came to him over
the ripening fields and mingled with the breath of the sea.

They passed his luggage through the Customs quickly, and Antony was free
to wonder and to explore. Not since he had left the oleanders and
jasmines of New Orleans had he smelled such delicious odours as those of
sea-girdled Havre. A few soldiers in red uniforms tramped down the
streets singing the Marseillaise. A group of fish-wives offered him
mussels and crabs.

In his grey travelling clothes, his soft grey hat, his bag in his hand,
he went away from the port toward the wide avenue.

The bright colour of a red awning of a cafe caught his eye; he decided
to breakfast before going on to Paris.

Paris! The