a beast when it
means to spring, whereupon he turned and fled.

That is, he turned and walked away swiftly. He would have run had it not
been for his renascent self-respect. He couldn't bring himself to run
from poor old Fay even though his nerves were tingling. He tried to
reassure himself by saying that it was no more than a repetition of that
dogging to which he had been subjected before, and that it would
discontinue once he was off the premises.

But when he turned to glance over his shoulder it seemed to him that the
sinister footsteps glided after him. That, he reasoned, might have been
no more than fancy. The arc-lights were rare on this rather lonely road,
and the enormous shadows they flung lent themselves to the startling of
sick imaginations. Nevertheless, as he walked Claude continued to look
back over his shoulder, always with renewed impressions of a creepy
thing trying to track him down. Having entered the obscurity of their
own driveway, he broke at last into a light, soundless trot which was
not slackened till he reached the relative protection of the door.

* * * * *

But by morning he had regained a measure of tranquillity. Knowing what
he had to do, he was resolved to do it promptly. With sunlight and
summer and the sense of being home again to brace him up, the Claude who
was a devil-of-a-fellow seemed in a fair way to be reborn. Waiting after
breakfast only long enough to be discreet, he took his way up the hill
again.

He was confident by this time, and the more so because of his being
beyond the need of concealments. There would be no more shrinking into
the odorous depths of the hothouse, or hesitancies, or equivocations. He
would walk up and avow himself--to father and mother as well as to
Rosie. The hero in him was coming to his own at last.

The gash in the hothouse roof which he could see from a distance was
what he noticed first. In his two nocturnal visits this had not been
apparent. Now that he saw it he stood stock-still. It was something like
a gash within himself, a gash in his courage perhaps, or a gash in the
dream of a reconstituted self. He knew vaguely that his father had
refused the renewal of the lease and that at some time in the near
future Fay would have to go; but he had not expected the immediate signs
of complete demoralization. Now that they were there they disconcerted
him.

He went on till he was in view of the house. It gave him