m every
minute of the day, but she had drawn new strength and steadfastness
from his kindly counsels. He understood both the big tragedies of
life--which often hold some brief, perfect memory to make them
bearable--and those incessant, gnat-like irritations which uncongenial
fellowship involves.

Somehow he had the faculty of relegating small personal vexations to
their proper place in the scheme of things--thrusting them far into the
background. It was as though someone drew you to the window and,
ignoring the small, man-made flower-beds of the garden with their
insistent crop of weeds, the circumscribed lawns, and the foolish,
twisting paths that led to nowhere, pointed you to the distant
landscape where the big breadths of light and shadow, the broad
draughtmanship of God, stretched right away to the dim blue line of the
horizon.

CHAPTER XX

THE CAGE DOOR

For the first few days succeeding Lord St. John's departure from Trenby
Hall, matters progressed comparatively smoothly. Then, as his
influence waned with absence, the usual difficulties reappeared, the
old hostilities--hostilities of outlook and generation--arising once
more betwixt Nan and Lady Gertrude. Mutual understanding is impossible
between two people whose sense of values is fundamentally opposed, and
music, the one thing that had counted all through Nan's life, was a
matter of supreme unimportance to the older woman. She regarded
it--or, indeed, any other form of art, for that matter--as amongst the
immaterial fripperies of life, something to be put aside at any moment
in favour of social or domestic duties. It signified even less to her
than it did to Eliza McBain, to whom it at least represented one of the
lures of Satan--and for this reason could not be entirely discounted.

Since Sandy's stimulating visit Nan had devoted considerable time to
the composition of her concerto, working at it with a recrudescence of
her old enthusiasm, and the work had been good for her. It had carried
her out of herself, preventing her from dwelling continually upon the
past. Unfortunately, however, the hours she spent in the seclusion of
the West Parlour were not allowed to pass without comment.

"It seems to take you a long time to compose a new piece," remarked
Isobel at dinner one day, the trite expression "new piece" very
evidently culled from her school-day memories.

Nan smiled across at her.

"A concerto's a pretty big undertaking, you se