distance away, a life of alluring and
passionate happiness. Should he ever find the courage, he wondered, to
escape from the treadmill and go in search of it? Duty, for the last two
years, had taken him by the hand and led him along a pathway of shame.
He had never been a hypocrite about the war. He was one of those who had
acknowledged from the first that Germany had set forth, with the sword
in her hand, on a war of conquest. His own inherited martial spirit had
vaguely approved; he, too, in those earlier days, had felt the sunlight
upon his rapier. Later had come the enlightenment, the turbulent waves
of doubt, the nightmare of a nation's awakening conscience, mirrored in
his own soul. It was in a depression shared, perhaps, in a lesser
degree by millions of those whose ranks he had joined, that he felt this
passionate craving for escape into a world which took count of other
things.

CHAPTER XVII

Punctually at 12 o'clock the next morning, Lessingham presented himself
at the hotel in Dover Street and was invited by the hall porter to take
a seat in the lounge. Philippa entered, a few minutes later, her eyes
and cheeks brilliant with the brisk exercise she had been taking, her
slim figure most becomingly arrayed in grey cloth and chinchilla.

"I lost Helen in Harrod's," she announced, "but I know she's lunching
with friends, so it really doesn't matter. You'll have to take care of
me, Mr. Lessingham, until the train goes, if you will."

"For even longer than that, if you will," he murmured.

She laughed. "More pretty speeches? I don't think I'm equal to them
before luncheon."

"This time I am literal," he explained. "I am coming back to Dreymarsh
myself."

He felt his heart beat quicker, a sudden joy possessed him. Philippa's
expression was obviously one of satisfaction.

"I'm so glad," she assured him. "Do you know, I was thinking only as I
came back in the taxicab, how I should miss you."

She was standing with her foot upon the broad fender, and her first
little impulse of pleasure seemed to pass as she looked into the fire.
She turned towards him gravely.

"After all, do you think you are wise?" she asked. "Of course, I don't
think that any one at Dreymarsh has the least suspicion, but you know
Captain Griffiths did ask questions, and--well, you're safely away now.
You have been so wonderful about Dick, so wonderful altogether," she
went on, "that I couldn't bear it if trouble were to come."