n exquisite
courtesy of the much abused English climate when it makes up its
meteorological mind to behave like a perfect gentleman. Of course the
English climate is never a rough. It suffers from spleen somewhat
frequently--but that is gentlemanly too, and I don't mind going to meet
him in that mood. He has his days of grey, veiled, polite melancholy, in
which he is very fascinating. How seldom he lapses into a blustering
manner, after all! And then it is mostly in a season when, appropriately
enough, one may go out and kill something. But his fine days are the
best for stopping at home, to read, to think, to muse--even to dream; in
fact to live fully, intensely and quietly, in the brightness of
comprehension, in that receptive glow of the mind, the gift of the clear,
luminous and serene weather.

That day I had intended to live intensely and quietly, basking in the
weather's glory which would have lent enchantment to the most unpromising
of intellectual prospects. For a companion I had found a book, not
bemused with the cleverness of the day--a fine-weather book, simple and
sincere like the talk of an unselfish friend. But looking at little Fyne
seated in the room I understood that nothing would come of my
contemplative aspirations; that in one way or another I should be let in
for some form of severe exercise. Walking, it would be, I feared, since,
for me, that idea was inseparably associated with the visual impression
of Fyne. Where, why, how, a rapid striding rush could be brought in
helpful relation to the good Fyne's present trouble and perplexity I
could not imagine; except on the principle that senseless pedestrianism
was Fyne's panacea for all the ills and evils bodily and spiritual of the
universe. It could be of no use for me to say or do anything. It was
bound to come. Contemplating his muscular limb encased in a
golf-stocking, and under the strong impression of the information he had
just imparted I said wondering, rather irrationally:

"And so de Barral had a wife and child! That girl's his daughter. And
how . . . "

Fyne interrupted me by stating again earnestly, as though it were
something not easy to believe, that his wife and himself had tried to
befriend the girl in every way--indeed they had! I did not doubt him for
a moment, of course, but my wonder at this was more rational. At that
hour of the morning, you mustn't forget, I knew nothing as yet of Mrs.
Fyne's contact (it was ha