and the violence of his feeling
frightened him. It was, in truth, as he had said, his own life that he
was fighting for. If he gave up Westmore he could not fall back on the
futile activities of Lynbrook, and fate might yet have some lower
alternative to offer. He could trust to his own strength and
self-command while his energies had a normal outlet; but idleness and
self-indulgence might work in him like a dangerous drug.

Justine kept steadily to her point. "Westmore must be foremost to both
of you in time; I don't see how either of you can escape that. But the
realization of it must come to Bessy through _you_, and for that reason
I think that you ought to be more patient--that you ought even to put
the question aside for a time and enter a little more into her life
while she is learning to understand yours." As she ended, it seemed to
her that what she had said was trite and ineffectual, and yet that it
might have passed the measure of discretion; and, torn between two
doubts, she added hastily: "But you have done just that in coming back
now--that is the real solution of the problem."

While she spoke they passed out of the wood-path they had been
following, and rounding a mass of shrubbery emerged on the lawn below
the terraces. The long bulk of the house lay above them, dark against
the lingering gleam of the west, with brightly-lit windows marking its
irregular outline; and the sight produced in Amherst and Justine a vague
sense of helplessness and constraint. It was impossible to speak with
the same freedom, confronted by that substantial symbol of the accepted
order, which seemed to glare down on them in massive disdain of their
puny efforts to deflect the course of events: and Amherst, without
reverting to her last words, asked after a moment if his wife had many
guests.

He listened in silence while Justine ran over the list of names--the
Telfer girls and their brother, Mason Winch and Westy Gaines, a cluster
of young bridge-playing couples, and, among the last arrivals, the
Fenton Carburys and Ned Bowfort. The names were all familiar to
Amherst--he knew they represented the flower of week-end fashion; but he
did not remember having seen the Carburys among his wife's guests, and
his mind paused on the name, seeking to regain some lost impression
connected with it. But it evoked, like the others, merely the confused
sense of stridency and unrest which he had brought away from his last
Lynbrook visit; and