* * * * *

When she had gone, the Squire still continued pacing, absorbed
in meeting the attack of new and strange ideas. He had
always been a man with a singularly small reflective gift.
Self-examination--introspection of any sort--were odious to him. He
lived on stimulus from outside, attracted or repelled, amused or
interested, bored or angry, as the succession of events or impressions
might dictate. To collect beautiful things was a passion with him, and
he was proud of the natural taste and instinct, which generally led
him right. But for 'aesthetics'--the philosophy of art--he had nothing
but contempt. The volatile, restless mind escaped at once from the
concentration asked of it; and fell back on what the Buddhist calls
'Maia,' the gay and changing appearances of things, which were all he
wanted. And it was because the war had interfered with this pleasant
and perpetual challenge to the senses of the outer world, because
it forced a man back on general ideas that he did not want to
consider--God, Country, Citizenship--that the Squire had hated the
war.

But this woman who had become an inmate of his house, while she
ministered to all the tastes that the Squire had built up as a
screen between himself and either the tragic facts of contemporary
life, or any troublesome philosophizing about them, was yet
gradually, imperceptibly, drawing the screen aside. Her humanity was
developing the feeble shoots of sympathy and conscience in himself.
What she felt, he was beginning to feel; and when she hated anything
he must at least uncomfortably consider why.

But all this she did and achieved through her mere fitness and
delightfulness as a companion. He had never imagined that life would
bring him anybody--least of all a woman--who would both give him so
much, and save him so much. Selfish, exacting, irritable--he knew
very well that he was all three. But it had not prevented this
capable, kind, clever creature from devoting herself to him, from
doing her utmost, not only to save his estate and his income, but to
make his life once more agreeable to him, in spite of the war and
all the rancour and resentments it had stirred up in him.

How patient she had been with these last! He was actually beginning
to be ashamed of some of them. And now to-night--what made her come
and give him the extra pleasure of her company these two hours?
Sympathy, he supposed, about Desmond.

Well, he was gratef