mind, dear; or perhaps over there where it looks drier; or just there under that tree, perhaps, is better still. It's more sheltered, and there's less sun, isn't there?'
'I think there is, yes,' he replied, obeying her. The phrase 'there's less sun' seemed to him so neatly descriptive of the mental state of persons without imagination.
'She'll come here for her summer holidays soon,' his sister resumed, going back to Joan. 'She works very hard at that "Home" place in town, and Dick always liked her to use us here as if the place were her own. I promised that.' She dropped gracefully into the wicker chair, and Paul sat down for a moment beside her on the grass. 'He spent a lot of capital, you know, in the thing and made her superintendent or something. She has a sort of passion for this rescuing of slum children, and, I believe, works herself to death over it, though she has means of her own. So you will be nice to her when she comes, won't you, and look after her a bit? I do what I can, but I always feel I'm rather a failure. I never know what to talk to her about. She's so dreadfully in earnest about every thing.'
Paul promised. Joan sounded rather attractive, to tell the truth. He remembered something, too, of the big organisation his old friend had founded in London for the rescue and education of waif-boys. A thrill of pride ran through him, and close at its heels a secret sense of shame, that he himself did nothing in the great world of action—that his own life was a mass of selfish dreaming and refined self-seeking, that all his yearning for God and beauty was after all, perhaps, but a spiritual egoism. It was not the first time this thought had come to trouble and perplex. Of late—especially since he had begun to find these safety-valves of self-expression, and so a measure of relief—his mind had turned in the direction of some bigger field to work in outside self, perhaps more than he quite knew or realised.
'Paul,' his sister interrupted his reflections, after a prolonged fidgeting to make herself comfortable so that the parasol should shade her, the hat not tickle her, and the novel open easily for reading; 'you are happy here, aren't you? You're not too dull with us, I mean?'
'It's quite delightful, Margaret,' he answered at once. 'In one sense I have never been so happy in my life.' He looked straight at her, the sun catching his brown beard and face. 'And I love the children; they're just the kind of companions I need.'
'I'm so glad, so glad,' she said genuinely. 'And it's very kind and good-natured of you to be with them such a lot. You really almost fill Dick's place for them.' She sighed and half closed her eyes. 'Some day you may have children of your own; only you would spoil them quite atrociously, I'm sure.'
'Am I spoiling yours?' he asked solemnly.
'Dreadfully,' she laughed; 'and turning little Mademoiselle's head into the bargain.'
It was his turn to burst out laughing. 'I think that young lady can take care of herself without difficulty,' he exclaimed; 'and as for my spoiling the children, I think it's they who are spoiling me!'
And, presently, with some easy excuse, he left her side and went off into the woods. Margaret watched him charge across the lawn. A perplexed expression came into her face as she picked up her novel and settled down into the cushions, balancing the red parasol over her head at a very careful angle. Admiration was in her glance, too, as she saw him go. Evidently she was proud of her brother—proud that he was so different from other people, yet puzzled to the verge of annoyance that he should be so.
'What a strange creature he is,' was her some-, what indefinite reflection; 'I thought but one Dick could exist in the world! He's still a boy—not a day over twenty-five. I wonder if he's ever been in love, or ever will be? I think—I hope he won't; he's rather nice as he is after all.'
She sighed faintly. Then she dipped again into her novel, wherein the emotions, from love down-; wards, were turned on thick and violent as from] so many taps in a factory; got bored with it looked on to the last chapter to see what happened; to everybody; and, finally—fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIII
To me alone there came a thought of grief:
A timely utterance gave that thought relief,
And I again am strong:
I hear the echoes through the mountains throng,
The winds come to me from the fields of sleep,
And all the earth is gay. . . .
Ode, W. W.
For the rest of the day Paul was in peculiarly good spirits; he went about the place full of bedevilment of all kinds, to the astonishment of the household in general and of his sister in particular. The oppressive heat seemed to have no effect upon him. There was something in the air that excited him, and he was very busy getting rid of the excitement.
With bedtime came no desire to sleep. 'I feel all worked-up, Margaret,' he said as he lit her candle in the hall. 'I think it must be an "aventure" coming,'—though, of course, she had no idea what he meant.
'There's thunder about,' she replied. 'It's been so very close all day.'
'Sleep well,' Paul said when he left her at the top of the stairs; and the last thing he heard as he went down the long winding passage to his bedroom in the west wing was her voice faintly assuring him 'One always does here, I'm glad to say.'
Once inside, and the door shut, he gave himself up to his mood. It was a mood apparently that came from nowhere. A soft and mysterious excitement, all delicious, stirred in the depths of his being, rising slowly to the surface. Perhaps it was growing-pains somewhere in the structure of his personality, engineered subconsciously by his imagination; perhaps only 'weather.' He always followed the barometer like a strip of dried seaweed.
But on this particular night something more than mere 'weather' was abroad; his nerves sent a succession of swift faint warnings to his brain. To begin with, the night herself claimed definite attention. Some nights are just ordinary nights; others touch the soul and whisper 'I am the night. Look at me. Listen!'
He obeyed the summons and went to the window, leaning out as his habit was. The darkness pressed up in a solid wall, charged to the brim with mysteries waiting to reveal themselves. No trees were visible, no outline of moor or hill or garden. The sky was pinned down to the horizon more tightly than usual—keeping back all manner of things. Very little air crept beneath the edges, so that the atmosphere was oppressive. The day had been cloudless, but with the sunset whole continents of vapour had climbed upon the hills of the evening wind, driven slowly by high currents that had not yet come near enough the earth to be heard and felt.
He coughed—gently. The least noise, he felt, would shatter some soft and delicate structure that rose everywhere through the darkness—some web-like shadow-scaffolding that reared upwards, supporting the night.
'Something's going to happen,' he said low to himself. 'I can feel it coming.'
He became very imaginative, enjoying his mood enormously, letting it act as a mental purge. Aventures that he would discover for the next Meeting swept through him. The stress and fever of creative fancy, stirred by the deep travailing of the elements behind that curtain of night, was upon him. Then, sleep being far away, he went to the writing-table, where Nixie's deft hands had everything prepared, lit a second candle, and began to write.
'I'll write "How
