tten my waterproof," exclaimed Mrs. Potten, as she went down
the steps.

Bingham dived into the hall after it and having found it in the arms of
a servant, he hurried back to Mrs. Potten.

"I do believe I've dropped my handkerchief," remarked Mrs. Potten, as he
started her down the drive at a brisk trot.

"Are you afraid of this pace?" asked Bingham evasively, for he did not
intend to return to the house.

Boreham gazed after them with his beard at a saturnine angle. "You
couldn't expect her to remember everything," he muttered to himself.

The sky was low, heavy and grey, and the air was chilly and yet close,
and everything--sky, half-leafless trees, the gravelled drive
too--seemed to be steaming with moisture. The words came to Boreham's
mind:

"My very heart faints and my whole soul grieves,
At the moist rich smell of the rotting leaves."

"That won't do," he said to himself, as he still stood on the steps
motionless. "It's no use quoting from Victorian poets. 'What the people
want' is nothing older than Masefield or Noyes, or Verhaeren. Because,
though Verhaeren's old enough, they didn't know about him till just now,
and so he seems new; then there are all the new small chaps. No, I can't
finish that article. After all, what does it matter? They must wait, and
I can afford now to say, 'Take it or leave it, and go to the Devil!'"

He turned and went up the steps. There was no sound audible except the
noise Boreham was making with his own feet on the strip of marble that
met the parquetted floor of the hall. "It's a beastly distance from
Oxford," he said, half aloud; "one can't just drop in on people in the
evening, and who else is there? I'm not going to waste my life on half a
dozen damned sport-ridden, parson-ridden neighbours who can barely spell
out a printed book."

One thing had become clear in Boreham's mind. Either he must marry May
Dashwood for love, or he must try and let Chartcote, taking rooms in
Oxford and a flat in town.

If Boreham had found the morning unprofitable, the Hardings had not
found it less so.

"Did Mrs. Potten propose calling?" asked Harding of his wife, as they
sat side by side, rolling over a greasy road towards Oxford.

"No," said Mrs. Harding.

"It's quite clear to me," said Harding, "that Mrs. G. P. only regards
Boreham as a freak, so that _he_ won't be any use."

"We needn't go there again," said Mrs. Harding, "unless, of course," she
added thoughtfully, "w