of beauty, born and bred in the country, suffers fearfully
from nostalgia during a long unbroken spell of London; so that his
afternoon in the old Abbey had been almost holy. He had let his senses
sink into the sunlit greenery of the towering woods opposite; he had
watched the spiders and the little shining beetles, the flycatchers,
and sparrows in the ivy; touched the mosses and the lichens; looked
the speedwells in the eye; dreamed of he knew not what. A hawk had been
wheeling up there above the woods, and he had been up there with it in
the blue. He had taken a real spiritual bath, and washed the dusty fret
of London off his soul.

For a year he had been working his parish single-handed--no joke--for
his curate had gone for a chaplain; and this was his first real holiday
since the war began, two years ago; his first visit, too, to his
brother's home. He looked down at the garden, and up at the trees of the
avenue. Bob had found a perfect retreat after his quarter of a century
in Ceylon. Dear old Bob! And he smiled at the thought of his elder
brother, whose burnt face and fierce grey whiskers somewhat recalled a
Bengal tiger; the kindest fellow that ever breathed! Yes, he had found
a perfect home for Thirza and himself. And Edward Pierson sighed. He too
had once had a perfect home, a perfect wife; the wound of whose
death, fifteen years ago, still bled a little in his heart. Their two
daughters, Gratian and Noel, had not "taken after" her; Gratian was like
his own mother, and Noel's fair hair and big grey eyes always reminded
him of his cousin Leila, who--poor thing!--had made that sad mess of her
life, and now, he had heard, was singing for a living, in South Africa.
Ah! What a pretty girl she had been!

Drawn by that eternal waltz tune he reached the doorway of the
music-room. A chintz curtain hung there, and to the sound of feet
slipping on polished boards, he saw his daughter Noel waltzing slowly
in the arms of a young officer in khaki: Round and round they went,
circling, backing, moving sideways with curious steps which seemed to
have come in recently, for he did not recognise them. At the piano sat
his niece Eve, with a teasing smile on her rosy face. But it was at his
young daughter that Edward Pierson looked. Her eyes were half-closed,
her cheeks rather pale, and her fair hair, cut quite short, curled into
her slim round neck. Quite cool she seemed, though the young man in
whose arms she was gliding along lo