"Always your loving
TARA."

By the time he had finished reading that so characteristic and endearing
letter his plans were cut and dried. Her irresistible appeal--and the no
less irresistible urge within him--left no room for the deliberations of
his sensitive complex nature. It flung open all the floodgates of
memory; set every nerve aching for Home--and Tara, late discovered; but
not too late, he passionately prayed....

The nightmare journey had no terrors for him now. In every sense he was
'hers to command.'

He drew out his old, old letter-case--her gift--and opened it. There lay
the bracelet, folded inside her quaint, childish note; the 'ribbin' from
her 'petticote' and the gleaming strands of her hair. The sight of it
brought tears of which he felt not the least ashamed.

It also brought a vision of himself standing before his mother,
demurring at possible obligations involved in their 'game of play.' And
across the years came back to him her very words, her very look and
tone: 'Remember, Roy, it is for always. If she shall ask from you any
service, you must not refuse--ever.... By keeping the bracelet you are
bound ...'

Wire? Of course he would.

Before the day was out his message was speeding to her: "Engagement off.
Coming first possible boat. Yours to command--ROY."

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 40: English mail.]

CHAPTER III.

"Did you not know that people hide their love,
Like a flower that seems too precious to be picked?"
--WU-TI.

Sanctuary--at last! The garden of his dreams--of the world before the
deluge--in the quiet--coloured end of a July evening; the garden vitally
inwoven with his fate--since it was responsible for the coming of Joe
Bradley and his 'beaky mother.'

Such gardens bear more than trees and flowers and fruit. Human lives and
characters are growth of their soil. With the wholesale demolishing of
boundaries and hedges, their influence may wane; and it is an
influence--like the unobtrusive influence of the gentleman--that human
nature, especially English nature, can ill afford to fling away.

Roy, poet and fighter--with the lure of the desert and the horizon in
his blood--knew himself, also, for a spiritual product of this
particular garden--of the vast lawn (not quite so vast as he
remembered), the rose-beds and the beeches in the full glory of their
incomparable le