momentary baring of the teeth; an otter, escaping from the fangs of the
hounds into the safety of a deep pool, might have given a similar
demonstration of feelings.

From the library came the sound of moving furniture. Agnes was leaving
nothing unturned in her quest for the mythical chocolates. And then came
a more blessed sound, wheels crunching wet gravel.

"It has been a most enjoyable evening," said Rollo to his hostess.

CROSS CURRENTS

Vanessa Pennington had a husband who was poor, with few extenuating
circumstances, and an admirer who, though comfortably rich, was cumbered
with a sense of honour. His wealth made him welcome in Vanessa's eyes,
but his code of what was right impelled him to go away and forget her, or
at the most to think of her in the intervals of doing a great many other
things. And although Alaric Clyde loved Vanessa, and thought he should
always go on loving her, he gradually and unconsciously allowed himself
to be wooed and won by a more alluring mistress; he fancied that his
continued shunning of the haunts of men was a self-imposed exile, but his
heart was caught in the spell of the Wilderness, and the Wilderness was
kind and beautiful to him. When one is young and strong and unfettered
the wild earth can be very kind and very beautiful. Witness the legion
of men who were once young and unfettered and now eat out their souls in
dustbins, because, having erstwhile known and loved the Wilderness, they
broke from her thrall and turned aside into beaten paths.

In the high waste places of the world Clyde roamed and hunted and
dreamed, death-dealing and gracious as some god of Hellas, moving with
his horses and servants and four-footed camp followers from one dwelling
ground to another, a welcome guest among wild primitive village folk and
nomads, a friend and slayer of the fleet, shy beasts around him. By the
shores of misty upland lakes he shot the wild fowl that had winged their
way to him across half the old world; beyond Bokhara he watched the wild
Aryan horsemen at their gambols; watched, too, in some dim-lit tea-house
one of those beautiful uncouth dances that one can never wholly forget;
or, making a wide cast down to the valley of the Tigris, swam and rolled
in its snow-cooled racing waters. Vanessa, meanwhile, in a Bayswater
back street, was making out the weekly laundry list, attending bargain
sales, and, in her more adventurous moments, trying new ways of cooking
w