hat he would
be a 'bit of a makeshift' for Noel. He had spent the weeks after his
interview with her father obsessed by her image, often saying to himself
"It won't do. It's playing it too low down to try and get that child,
when I know that, but for her trouble, I shouldn't have a chance." He
had never had much opinion of his looks, but now he seemed to himself
absurdly old and dried-up in this desert of a London. He loathed the
Office job to which they had put him, and the whole atmosphere of
officialdom. Another year of it, and he would shrivel like an old apple!
He began to look at himself anxiously, taking stock of his physical
assets now that he had this dream of young beauty. He would be forty
next month, and she was nineteen! But there would be times too when he
would feel that, with her, he could be as much of a "three-year-old" as
the youngster she had loved. Having little hope of winning her, he took
her "past" but lightly. Was it not that past which gave him what chance
he had? On two things he was determined: He would not trade on her
past. And if by any chance she took him, he would never show her that he
remembered that she had one.

After writing to Gratian he had spent the week before his holiday began,
in an attempt to renew the youthfulness of his appearance, which made
him feel older, leaner, bonier and browner than ever. He got up early,
rode in the rain, took Turkish baths, and did all manner of exercises;
neither smoked nor drank, and went to bed early, exactly as if he had
been going to ride a steeplechase. On the afternoon, when at last he
left on that terrific pilgrimage, he gazed at his face with a sort of
despair, it was so lean, and leather-coloured, and he counted almost a
dozen grey hairs.

When he reached the bungalow, and was told that she was working in the
corn-fields, he had for the first time a feeling that Fate was on
his side. Such a meeting would be easier than any other! He had been
watching her for several minutes before she saw him, with his heart
beating more violently than it had ever beaten in the trenches; and
that new feeling of hope stayed with him--all through the greeting,
throughout supper, and even after she had left them and gone upstairs.
Then, with the suddenness of a blind drawn down, it vanished, and he
sat on, trying to talk, and slowly getting more and more silent and
restless.

"Nollie gets so tired, working," Gratian said: He knew she meant it
kindly but