nd, now nearly ten years ago, he had been in a
bitter mood. It had seemed to him that his own country was rejecting him
with scorn. But now his heart swelled proudly at the thought of the old
country--of all that she had endured since then. He had thought England
altered and very much for the worse, when he was in London on his two
brief "leaves" during the War, but now he knew how unchanged his country
was--in the things that really matter....

When he had come back for good, this summer, he had looked forward to an
easy, selfish life--the sort of life certain men whom he had envied as a
boy used to lead before the war.

Radmore knew, as every man who has lived to the age of thirty-two must
know, that marriage brings with it certain cares, responsibilities, and
troubles, and so he had deliberately made up his mind to avoid marriage,
though he had been conscious the while that if he fell violently in love,
then, perhaps, half knowing all the time that he was a fool, he might
find himself pushed into marriage with some foolish girl, or what was
perchance more likely, with a pretty widow.

To-night he realised with a sort of shame that there were moments--he
was glad that they were only moments--when he felt uneasily yet strongly
attracted to Enid Crofton, and that though he knew how selfish, how
self-absorbed and, yes, how cruel she could be. For well he knew she had
been cruel to her elderly husband. He was sorry now that she had come to
Beechfield. She had become an irritating, disturbing element in his life.

Radmore had looked at every eligible property within a radius of twenty
miles of Old Place, but though some of them did not fall far short of the
ideal he had in his mind, he hadn't felt as if he wanted any of them.
They were too trim, too new--in a word, too suburban. Even the very old
houses had been transformed by their owners much as The Trellis House had
been transformed, into something to suit modern taste. He told himself
that he must begin looking again--looking in real dead earnest, going
farther afield.

Absorbed in his thoughts, he had driven on and on, almost mechanically,
till suddenly they came to four cross-roads. He drew up under a
sign-post, jumped out and struck a match, and as he read the painted
words he realised, with vexation, that he had gone a good bit out of his
way. There was nothing for it now but to go on till they struck the
Portsmouth Road. It was the quietest hour of the twenty-