t. His heart gave a little painful jump. He couldn't
bear her to cry. He put his other hand quickly over hers, and a tear
dropped on that, too. He couldn't go on like this! "Well, well," he
said, "I'll think it over, and do what I can. Come, come!" If she must
have it for her happiness--she must; he couldn't refuse to help her.
And lest she should begin to thank him he got out of his chair and went
up to the piano-player--making that noise! It ran down, as he reached
it, with a faint buzz. That musical box of his nursery days: "The
Harmonious Blacksmith," "Glorious Port"--the thing had always made him
miserable when his mother set it going on Sunday afternoons. Here it
was again--the same thing, only larger, more expensive, and now it
played: "The Wild Wild Women" and "The Policeman's Holiday," and he was
no longer in black velvet with a sky-blue collar. 'Profond's right,' he
thought, 'there's nothing in it! We're all progressing to the grave!'
And with that surprising mental comment he walked out.

He did not see Fleur again that night. But, at breakfast, her eyes
followed him about with an appeal he could not escape--not that he
intended to try. No! He had made up his mind to the nerve-racking
business. He would go to Robin Hill--to that house of memories. A
pleasant memory--the last! Of going down to keep that boy's father and
Irene apart by threatening divorce. He had often thought, since, that
it had clenched their union. And, now, he was going to clench the union
of that boy with his girl. 'I don't know what I've done,' he thought,
'to have such things thrust on me!' He went up by train and down by
train, and from the station walked by the long rising lane, still very
much as he remembered it over thirty years ago. Funny--so near London!
Some one evidently was holding on to the land there. This speculation
soothed him, moving between the high hedges slowly, so as not to get
overheated, though the day was chill enough. After all was said and
done there was something real about land, it didn't shift. Land, and
good pictures! The values might fluctuate a bit, but on the whole they
were always going up--worth holding on to, in a world where there was
such a lot of unreality, cheap building, changing fashions, such a
"Here to-day and gone to-morrow" spirit. The French were right,
perhaps, with their peasant proprietorship, though he had no opinion of
the French. One's bit of land! Something solid in it! He had heard
pe