en, not
requiring of himself to be too rigidly consistent. Hence Theresa, and
all which pertained to her, even her follies, appeared to him of
contemptibly small moment compared with the developments for which those
follies might be held accidentally responsible. His mind returned to
that main theme painfully. He envisaged it in all its bearings, not
sparing himself. Suffered, and looked on at his own suffering with a
stoicism somewhat sardonic.

Meanwhile Damaris slept. His nearness had not disturbed her, indeed he
might rather suppose its effect beneficent. For her breathing grew even,
just sweetly and restfully audible in the intervals of other sounds
reaching him from out of doors.

The wind, drawing out of the sunset, freshened during the night. Now it
blew wet and gustily from south-west, sighing through the pines and
Scotch firs in the Wilderness. A strand of the yellow Banksia rose,
trained against the house wall, breaking loose, scratched and tapped at
the window-panes with anxious appealing little noises.

Many years had elapsed since Charles Verity spent a night upstairs in
this part of the house, and by degrees those outdoor sounds attracted his
attention as intimately familiar. They carried him back to his boyhood,
to the spacious dreams and projects of adolescence. He could remember
just such gusty wet winds swishing through the trees, such petulant
fingering of errant creepers upon the windows, when he stayed here during
the holidays from school at Harchester, on furlough from his regiment,
and, later, on long leave from India, during his wonderful little
great-uncle's lifetime.

And his thought took a lighter and friendlier vein, recalling that
polished, polite, encyclopedic minded and witty gentleman, who had lived
to within a few months of his full century with a maximum of interest and
entertainment to himself, and a minimum of injury or offence to others.
To the last he retained his freshness of intellectual outlook, his
insatiable yet discreet curiosity. Taking it as a whole, should his life
be judged a singularly futile or singularly enviable one? Nothing
feminine, save on strictly platonic lines, was recorded to have entered
it at any period. Did that argue remarkable wisdom or defective courage,
or some abnormal element in a composition otherwise deliciously mundane
and human?

Charles had debated this often. Even as a boy it had puzzled him. As a
young man he had held his own views on the