y from him,--he riding under escort
of Death, the black captain--all tributes of human tenderness and
approval gained in value.--Not the approval of notable personages, of
those high in office, nor even that of sympathetic critics and readers;
but of persons in his own immediate voisinage, bound to him by
friendship, by association, or the tie of blood.--Their good-will was
precious to him as never before. He craved to be in perfect amity with
every member of that restricted circle. Hence it vexed and fretted him to
know the circle incomplete, through the exclusion of one rather
flagrantly intimate example. Yet to draw the said member, the said
example, within the circle, yielding it the place which it might
rightfully aspire to occupy, amounted--after half a lifetime of
abstention and avoidance--to a rather tremendous demonstration, one which
might well be hailed as extravagant, as a courting of offence possible
only to a sentimental egoist of most aggravated kind.

And he was tired--had no smallest inclination towards demonstrations. For
the threatening of heart spasm, to which he lately denied the title of
pain, though of short duration, affected him adversely, sapping his
strength. His mind, it is true, remained clear, even vividly receptive;
but, just as earlier this morning, his will proved insufficient for its
direction or control. He mused, his chin sunk on his breast, his left
hand travelling down over the long soft moustache, his eyes half closed.
Thought and vision followed their own impulse, wandering back and forth
between the low-caste eating-house in the sweltering heat and perfumed
stenches of the oriental, tropic seaport; and the stone-built English
inn--here on Marychurch Haven--overlooking the desolate waste of
sand-hills, the dark reed-beds and chill gleaming tides.

For love of Damaris, his daughter, while still in the heat of his prime,
he had foresworn all traffic with women. Yet now, along with the tacitly
admitted claims of the son, arose the claim of the mistress, mother of
that son--in no sensual sort, but with a certain wildness of bygone
romance, wind and rain-swept, unsubstantial, dim and grey. Ever since
conviction of the extreme gravity of his physical condition dawned on
him, the idea of penetrating the courts of that deserted sanctuary had
been recurrent. In the summing up of his human, his earthly, experience,
romance deserved, surely, a word of farewell? Damaris' story served to
give