visit to Robin Hill, soon after their
arrival home, had yielded no sight of him--he was still at school; so
that her recollection, like Val's, was of a little sunny-haired boy,
striped blue and yellow, down by the pond.

Those three days at Robin Hill had been exciting, sad, embarrassing.
Memories of her dead brother, memories of Val's courtship; the ageing of
her father, not seen for twenty years, something funereal in his ironic
gentleness which did not escape one who had much subtle instinct;
above all, the presence of her stepmother, whom she could still
vaguely remember as the "lady in grey" of days when she was little and
grandfather alive and Mademoiselle Beauce so cross because that intruder
gave her music lessons--all these confused and tantalised a spirit which
had longed to find Robin Hill untroubled. But Holly was adept at keeping
things to herself, and all had seemed to go quite well.

Her father had kissed her when she left him, with lips which she was
sure had trembled.

"Well, my dear," he said, "the War hasn't changed Robin Hill, has it?
If only you could have brought Jolly back with you! I say, can you
stand this spiritualistic racket? When the oak-tree dies, it dies, I'm
afraid."

From the warmth of her embrace he probably divined that he had let the
cat out of the bag, for he rode off at once on irony.

"Spiritualism--queer word, when the more they manifest the more they
prove that they've got hold of matter."

"How?" said Holly.

"Why! Look at their photographs of auric presences. You must have
something material for light and shade to fall on before you can take
a photograph. No, it'll end in our calling all matter spirit, or all
spirit matter--I don't know which."

"But don't you believe in survival, Dad?"

Jolyon had looked at her, and the sad whimsicality of his face impressed
her deeply.

"Well, my dear, I should like to get something out of death. I've been
looking into it a bit. But for the life of me I can't find anything that
telepathy, sub-consciousness, and emanation from the storehouse of
this world can't account for just as well. Wish I could! Wishes father
thought but they don't breed evidence." Holly had pressed her lips again
to his forehead with the feeling that it confirmed his theory that all
matter was becoming spirit--his brow felt, somehow, so insubstantial.

But the most poignant memory of that little visit had been watching,
unobserved, her stepmother reading to