d stood at his
bedroom door, to gaze--mother-like, to worship. The moonlight just
touched the pillow. He lay with his head on his arm; the full white
chest was partly bared; the spare length of the muscular body was
outlined beneath the sheet. Her eyes filled with tears. She turned from
the door, and, noiselessly as she had come, went back to her room and
her couch.

* * * * *

How little the pending decision weighed on his mind was proven by his
long untroubled sleep; but directly after a late breakfast he told his
mother he was going out to prospect a little in The Gore; and she,
understanding, questioned him no further. He whistled to Rag and turned
into the side road that led to the first quarry. There was no work going
on there. This small ownership of forty acres was merged in the
syndicate which had so recently acquired the two hundred acres from the
Googe estate. He made his way over the hill and around to the head of
The Gore. He wanted to climb the cliff-like rocks and think it out under
the pines, landmarks of his early boyhood. He picked his way among the
boulders and masses of sheep laurel; he was thinking not of the quarries
but of himself; he did not even inquire of himself how the sale of the
quarries might be about to affect his future.

Champney Googe was self-centred. The motives for all his actions in a
short and uneventful life were the spokes to his particular hub of self;
the tire, that bound them and held them to him, he considered merely the
necessary periphery of constant contact with people and things by which
his own little wheel of fortune might be made to roll the more easily.
He was following some such line of thought while turning Mr. Van
Ostend's plan over and over in his mind, viewing it from all sides. It
was not what he wanted, but it might lead to that. His eyes were on the
rough ground beneath him, his thoughts busy with the pending decision,
when he was taken out of himself by hearing an unexpected voice in his
vicinity.

"Good morning, Mr. Googe. Am I poaching on your preserve?"

Champney recognized the voice at once. It was Father Honore's hailing
him from beneath the pines. He was sitting with his back against one; a
violin lay on its cover beside him; on his lap was a drawing-board with
rule and compass pencil. Champney realized on the instant, and with a
feeling of pleasure, that the priest's presence was no intrusion even at
this juncture.