n as a boy--as a boy who had made blunders and would
make others again, and would at last turn to his father as the only
person who could help him. He had fancied once or twice that he had
already begun to turn.

Well, he would be there if Robin wanted him. He had decided to speak
to Mary about it. Her clear common-sense point of view seemed to
drive, like the sun, through the mists of his obscurity; she always saw
straight through things--never round them--and her practical mind
arrived at a quicker solution than was possible for his rather
romantic, quixotic sentiment.

"You are too fond of discerning pleasant motives," she had once said to
him. "I daresay they are all right, but it takes such a time to see
them."

He had not seen her since the outbreak, and he was rather anxious as to
her opinion; but the main thing was to be with her. Since last Sunday
he had been, he confessed to himself, absurd. He had behaved more in
the manner of a boy of nineteen than a middle-aged widower of
forty-five. He had been suddenly afraid of the Bethels--going to tea
had seemed such an obvious advance on his part that he had shrunk from
it, and he had even avoided Bethel lest that gentleman should imagine
that he was on the edge of a proposal for his daughter's hand. He
thought that all the world must know of it, and he blushed like a girl
at the thought of its being laid bare for Pendragon to laugh and gibe
it. It was so precious, so wonderful, that he kept it, like a rich
piece of jewellery, deep in a secret drawer, over which he watched
delightedly, almost humorously, secure in the delicious knowledge that
he alone had the key. He wandered out at night, like a foolish
schoolboy, to watch the lamp in her room--that dull circle of golden
light against the blind seemed to draw him with it into the intimacy
and security of her room.

On one of his solitary afternoon walks he suddenly came upon her. He
had gone, as he so often did, over the moor to the Four Stones; he
chose that place partly because of the Stones themselves and partly
because of the wonderful view. It seemed to him that the whole heart
of Cornwall--its mystery, its eternal sameness, its rejection of
everything that was modern and ephemeral, the pathos of old deserted
altars and past gods searching for their old-time worshippers--was
centred there.

The Stones themselves stood on the hill, against the sky, gaunt, grey,
menacing, a landmark for all the