glare, the
heat-baked dust, the welter of crowded streets, who listened to the
unceasing chorus of harsh-throated crows, the strident creaking of cart-
wheels, the buzz and drone of insect swarms and the rattle call of the
tree lizards; men whose thoughts went hungrily to the cool grey skies and
wet turf and moist ploughlands of an English hunting country, men whose
memories listened yearningly to the music of a deep-throated hound and
the call of a game-bird in the stubble. Yeovil had secured for himself
the enjoyment of the things for which these men hungered; he had known
what he wanted in life, slowly and with hesitation, yet nevertheless
surely, he had arrived at the achievement of his unconfessed desires.
Here, installed under his own roof-tree, with as good horseflesh in his
stable as man could desire, with sport lying almost at his door, with his
wife ready to come down and help him to entertain his neighbours, Murrey
Yeovil had found the life that he wanted--and was accursed in his own
eyes. He argued with himself, and palliated and explained, but he knew
why he had turned his eyes away that evening from the little graveyard
under the trees; one cannot explain things to the dead.

CHAPTER XIX: THE LITTLE FOXES

"Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines"

On a warm and sunny May afternoon, some ten months since Yeovil's return
from his Siberian wanderings and sickness, Cicely sat at a small table in
the open-air restaurant in Hyde Park, finishing her after-luncheon coffee
and listening to the meritorious performance of the orchestra. Opposite
her sat Larry Meadowfield, absorbed for the moment in the slow enjoyment
of a cigarette, which also was not without its short-lived merits. Larry
was a well-dressed youngster, who was, in Cicely's opinion, distinctly
good to look on--an opinion which the boy himself obviously shared. He
had the healthy, well-cared-for appearance of a country-dweller who has
been turned into a town dandy without suffering in the process. His blue-
black hair, growing very low down on a broad forehead, was brushed back
in a smoothness that gave his head the appearance of a rain-polished
sloe; his eyebrows were two dark smudges and his large violet-grey eyes
expressed the restful good temper of an animal whose immediate
requirements have been satisfied. The lunch had been an excellent one,
and it was jolly to feed out of doors in the warm spring air--the onl