n it, but he accepted it
as a tribute to the Church.

"I was so afraid you wouldn't come," she said, in a voice that conveyed
indeed more than a perfunctory expression. She glanced at him as he sat
beside her on the cushions of the flying motor boat, his strange eyes
fixed upon the blue mountains of the island whither they were bound, his
unruly hair fanned by the wind.

"Why?" he asked, smiling at the face beneath the flying veil.

"You need the rest. I believe in men taking their work seriously, but
not so seriously as you do."

She was so undisguisedly glad to see him that he could scarcely have been
human if he had not responded. And she gave him, in that fortnight, a
glimpse of a life that was new and distracting: at times made him forget
--and he was willing to forget--the lower forms of which it was the
quintessence,--the factories that hummed, the forges that flung their
fires into the night in order that it might exist; the Dalton Streets
that went without. The effluvia from hot asphalt bore no resemblance to
the salt-laden air that rattled the Venetian blinds of the big bedroom to
which he was assigned. Her villa was set high above the curving shore,
facing a sheltered terrace-garden resplendent in its August glory; to
seaward, islands danced in the haze; and behind the house, in the
sunlight, were massed spruces of a brilliant arsenic green with purple
cones. The fluttering awnings were striped cardinal and white.

Nature and man seemed to have conspired to make this place vividly
unreal, as a toy village comes painted from the shop. There were no
half-tones, no poverty--in sight, at least; no litter. On the streets
and roads, at the casino attached to the swimming-pool and at the golf
club were to be seen bewildering arrays of well-dressed, well-fed women
intent upon pleasure and exercise. Some of them gave him glances that
seemed to say, "You belong to us," and almost succeeded in establishing
the delusion. The whole effect upon Hodder, in the state of mind in
which he found himself, was reacting, stimulating, disquieting. At
luncheons and dinners, he was what is known as a "success"--always that
magic word.

He resisted, and none so quick as women to scent resistance. His very
unbending attitude aroused their inherent craving for rigidity in his
profession; he was neither plastic, unctuous, nor subservient; his very
homeliness, redeemed by the eyes and mouth, compelled their attention.
One of them t