deal of their feeling for each other, and he expected that their
love would not last. He looked at them again, and, very strangely, for
he was so used to thinking that he seldom saw anything, the look of them
filled him with a simple emotion of affection in which there were some
traces of pity also. What, after all, did people's faults matter in
comparison with what was good in them? He resolved that he would now
tell them what he felt. He quickened his pace and came up with them just
as they reached the corner where the lane joined the main road. They
stood still and began to laugh at him, and to ask him whether the
gastric juices--but he stopped them and began to speak very quickly and
stiffly.

"D'you remember the morning after the dance?" he demanded. "It was here
we sat, and you talked nonsense, and Rachel made little heaps of stones.
I, on the other hand, had the whole meaning of life revealed to me in
a flash." He paused for a second, and drew his lips together in a tight
little purse. "Love," he said. "It seems to me to explain everything.
So, on the whole, I'm very glad that you two are going to be married."
He then turned round abruptly, without looking at them, and walked back
to the villa. He felt both exalted and ashamed of himself for having
thus said what he felt. Probably they were laughing at him, probably
they thought him a fool, and, after all, had he really said what he
felt?

It was true that they laughed when he was gone; but the dispute about
Helen which had become rather sharp, ceased, and they became peaceful
and friendly.

Chapter XXIV

They reached the hotel rather early in the afternoon, so that most
people were still lying down, or sitting speechless in their bedrooms,
and Mrs. Thornbury, although she had asked them to tea, was nowhere to
be seen. They sat down, therefore, in the shady hall, which was almost
empty, and full of the light swishing sounds of air going to and fro in
a large empty space. Yes, this arm-chair was the same arm-chair in which
Rachel had sat that afternoon when Evelyn came up, and this was the
magazine she had been looking at, and this the very picture, a picture
of New York by lamplight. How odd it seemed--nothing had changed.

By degrees a certain number of people began to come down the stairs and
to pass through the hall, and in this dim light their figures possessed
a sort of grace and beauty, although they were all unknown people.
Sometimes they