urled-up shoots of light green were springing
from the bracken. Here and there, a flame of gorse filled the air with
its faint, almond-like blossom. And the birds! Farmlands stretched
away on his left-hand side, and above the tender growth of corn, larks
invisible but multifarious filled the air with little quiverings of
melody. Bleatng lambs, ridiculously young, tottered around on this
new-found, wonderful earth. A pair of partridges scurried away from his
feet; the end of a drooping cloud splashed his face with a few warm
raindrops.

Tallente, as he swung onwards, carrying his cap in his hand, felt a
great glow of thankfulness for the impulse which had brought him here.
Already he was finding himself. The tangled emotions of the last week
were loosening their grip upon his brain and consciousness. Behind him
London was in an uproar, his name and future the theme of every journal.
Journalists were besieging his rooms. Embryo statesmen were telephoning
for appointments. Great men sent their secretaries to suggest a
meeting. And in the midst of it all he had disappeared. The truth as
to his sudden absence from town was unknown even to Dartrey. At the
very moment when his figure loomed large and triumphant upon one of the
great canvasses in history, he had simply slipped away, a disappearance
as dramatic as it was opportune. And all because he had a fancy to see
how spring sat upon the moors,--and because he had walked back to his
rooms by way of Charles Street and because he had met Lady Alice.

The last ascent was finished and below him lay the house and climbing
woods,--woods that crept into the bosom of the hills, the closely
growing trees tipped with tender greens melting into the softest of
indeterminate greys as the breeze rippled through their tops like
fingers across a harp. The darker line of moorland in the background,
scant as ever of herbiage, had yet lost its menacing bareness and seemed
touched with the faint colour of the earth beneath, almost pink in the
generous sunshine. The avenue into which he presently turned was
starred on either side with a riot of primroses, running wild into the
brambles, with here and there a belt of bluebells. The atmosphere
beneath the closely growing trees--limes, with great waxy buds--became
enervating with spring odours and a momentary breathlessness came to
Tallente, fresh from his crowded days and nights of battle. The
sun-warmed wave of perfume from the trim beds of hya