all be very pleasant. After
Ishmael had gone he sat and thought for a long while. What struck him
as noteworthy was that Killigrew should have been satiated with the
personal, which he had cultivated so assiduously, at the moment when, or
so it seemed to him, Ishmael, after a life spent for so long in the
impersonal, might be expected to react in exactly the opposite
direction. Ishmael, as he walked home, was only aware that the letter
had stirred him beyond the mere pleasurable expectation of once again
seeing his friend. That one word "ecstasy" had stung him to something
that had long been dormant--the desire to feel life again as something
wonderful, that did not only content but could intoxicate as well. He
was unaware of this revulsion, and was only vaguely surprised that a
queer discontent should mingle with his pleasure.

CHAPTER VII

PARADISE COTTAGE AGAIN

When the train came slowly into the station and clanked to rest with a
long, tired sigh of steam, Ishmael's first search was for Killigrew's
red beard and pale face. While his gaze roved up and down the line of
carriages a couple of women, one of whom seemed to know him, swam into
his range of vision and distracted his attention.

It was nearly ten years since he had seen Judith Parminter, and he
stared for a moment in bewilderment. Fashion had undergone in those
years one of its rare basic changes. Instead of the swelling curves
which had been wont to encompass women, so that they seemed to float
upon proud waves, skirts had become a species of swaddling clothes
caught back below the knees, whence a series of frills clung tightly
about the feet. Rows of flutings, tuckings and what-not, confounded
simplicity of line, but all the drapery was pulled in a backwards
direction and puffed to a sudden bulkiness behind, so that women looked
as though they were walking in the face of a perpetual wind. On their
heads they were wont to perch delicious little hats, poked forward, in
contradistinction to the trend of the draperies, slanting nosewards and
tilted up in the rear by plaited chignons.

Of the two women advancing towards Ishmael, the tall dark one, by far
the elder, wore under a black silk jacket a gown of soft red, the
terra-cotta then beginning to be in vogue amidst the artistic elect, but
it was smartly cut, whereas the peacock blue garment of her companion
showed a depressing sloppiness, which was not helped out by the
drooping rows of many-c