e heath starred with yellow and purple blooms, the distant line of
blue hills. The turf was no longer springy beneath my feet, a grey mist
hung over the joyous summer morning. I was back again on my way from Bow
Street, threading a difficult passage through the market baskets of
Covent Garden, the child stepping blithely by my side, graceful even
then, notwithstanding her immatureness, and quaintly attractive, though
her deep blue eyes were full of tears, and the white terror had not
passed wholly from her face. It was those few moments of her complete
and trustful helplessness which had transformed my life for me, those
few moments in which the huge folly of these later days had been born.
For her very coming seemed to have been at a chosen time--at one of
those periods of weariness which a man must feel whose sympathy with and
desire for life leads him into many and devious forms of distraction,
only to find in time the same dregs at the bottom of the cup. The joy of
her fresh childish beauty, her pure sweet trustfulness, at all times a
delicate flattery to any man, just the more so to me, a little inclined
towards self-distrust, was like a fragrant, a heart-stirring memory even
now. I looked back upon these years which lay between her youth and my
fast approaching middle-age--grey, weary years, whose follies seemed now
to rise up and stalk by my side, the ghosts of misspent days, ghosts of
the sickly reasonings of a sham philosophy which lead into the broad way
because its thoroughfares are easy and pleasant, and pressed by the
feet of the great majority. I kept my eyes fixed upon the ground and
I felt that strange thrill of despair pulling at my heartstrings,
dragging me downwards--the despair which is almost akin to physical
suffering.... And then a voice came floating back to me down the west
wind. Its call at such a moment seemed almost symbolical.

"Come along, you very lazy people! Arnold, may I walk with you for a
little way? Arthur is not at all brilliant this morning, and he does not
amuse me."

"I am afraid," I began, "that as an entertainer----"

"Oh, you want to smoke your pipe in peace, of course," she interrupted,
laughing, and passing her arm through mine. "Well, I am not going to
allow it. I want you--to tell me things."

So our little procession was re-formed. Mabane, and Arthur with his
hands deep in his pockets and an angry frown upon his forehead, walked
on ahead. Behind came Isobel and I--Isob