olmasters, doctors snatching a
holiday, good fellows all; the women, equally various--the clever, the
would-be-fast, the dare-to-be-dull, the women "who understood," and the
usual pack of jolly dancing girls and "flappers." And Hibbert, with his
forty odd years of thick experience behind him, got on well with the
lot; he understood them all; they belonged to definite, predigested
types that are the same the world over, and that he had met the world
over long ago.

But to none of them did he belong. His nature was too "multiple" to
subscribe to the set of shibboleths of any one class. And, since all
liked him, and felt that somehow he seemed outside of them--spectator,
looker-on--all sought to claim him.

In a sense, therefore, the three worlds fought for him: natives,
tourists, Nature....

It was thus began the singular conflict for the soul of Hibbert. _In_
his own soul, however, it took place. Neither the peasants nor the
tourists were conscious that they fought for anything. And Nature, they
say, is merely blind and automatic.

The assault upon him of the peasants may be left out of account, for it
is obvious that they stood no chance of success. The tourist world,
however, made a gallant effort to subdue him to themselves. But the
evenings in the hotel, when dancing was not in order, were--English. The
provincial imagination was set upon a throne and worshipped heavily
through incense of the stupidest conventions possible. Hibbert used to
go back early to his room in the post office to work.

"It is a mistake on my part to have _realised_ that there is any
conflict at all," he thought, as he crunched home over the snow at
midnight after one of the dances. "It would have been better to have
kept outside it all and done my work. Better," he added, looking back
down the silent village street to the church tower, "and--safer."

The adjective slipped from his mind before he was aware of it. He
turned with an involuntary start and looked about him. He knew perfectly
well what it meant--this thought that had thrust its head up from the
instinctive region. He understood, without being able to express it
fully, the meaning that betrayed itself in the choice of the adjective.
For if he had ignored the existence of this conflict he would at the
same time, have remained outside the arena. Whereas now he had entered
the lists. Now this battle for his soul must have issue. And he knew
that the spell of Nature was greater f