treated Garrett's cynicism with contempt. He wrote letters
to her every day full of the deepest sentiments and a great deal of
amazingly bad poetry. Clare wondered what was the matter, but asked no
questions, and was indeed far too firmly convinced of the efficacy of
the Trojan system to have any fears of mental or moral danger.

Then Miss Feverel made a mistake; she came with her mother to stay at
Pendragon. For the first week Robin was blissfully happy--then he
began to wonder. The best people in Pendragon would have nothing to do
with the Feverels. Aunt Clare, unaware that they were friends of
Robin's, pronounced them "commonly vulgar." The mother was more in
evidence than she had been at Cambridge, and Robin passed from dislike
to horror and from horror to hatred. Dahlia, too, seemed to have
changed. Robin had loved her too passionately hitherto to think of the
great Division. But soon he began to wonder. There were certain
things--little unimportant trifles, of course--that made him rather
uneasy; he began to have a horrible suspicion that she was one of the
Others; and then, once the suspicion was admitted, proof after proof
came forward to turn it into certainty.

How horrible, and what an escape! His visits to the little
lodging-house overlooking the sea where Dahlia played the piano so
enchantingly, and Mrs. Feverel, a solemn, rather menacing figure,
played silently and mournfully continuous Patience, were less and less
frequent. He was determined to break the matter off; it haunted his
dreams, it troubled him all day; he was forced to keep his
acquaintanceship with them secret, and was in perpetual terror lest
Aunt Clare should discover it. He had that most depressing of
unwished-for possessions, a skeleton; its cupboard-door swung
creakingly in the wind, and its bones rattled in his ears.

No, the thing must come to an end at once, and completely. They had
invited him to dinner and he had accepted, meaning to use the occasion
for the contemplated separation. He had thought often enough of what
he would say--words that had served others many times before in similar
situations. He would refer to their youth, the affair should be a
midsummer episode, pleasant to look back upon when they were both older
and married to more worthy partners; he would be a brother to her and
she should be a sister to him--but, thank God for his escape!

He believed that the Trojan traditions would carry him throu