s
to discourse upon a half-sentence. "I am afraid I am that, rather," he
said, reflectively. "But then Clarice and I could hardly have weathered
scandal except by making ourselves particularly agreeable to everybody.
And somehow I got into the habit of making people laugh. It isn't very
difficult. I am rather an adept at telling stories which just graze
impropriety, for instance. You know, they call me the social triumph of
my generation. And people are glad to see me because I am 'so awfully
funny' and 'simply killing' and so on. And I suppose it tells in the
long run--like the dyer's hand, you know."

"It does tell." Anne was thinking it would always tell. And that, too,
would be John Charteris's handiwork.

Ensued a silence. Rudolph Musgrave was painstakingly intent upon his
cigarette. A nestward-plunging bird called to his mate impatiently.
Then Anne shook her head impatiently.

"Come, while I'm thinking, I will drive you back to Lichfield."

"Oh, no; that wouldn't do at all," he said, with absolute decision. "No,
you see I have to return the boy. And I can't quite imagine your
carriage waiting at the doors of 'that Mrs. Pendomer.'"

"Oh," Anne fleetingly thought, "_he_ would have understood." But aloud
she only said: "And do you think I hate her any longer? Yes, it is true
I hated her until to-day, and now I'm just sincerely sorry for her. For
she and I--and you and even the child yonder--and all that any of us is
to-day--are just so many relics of John Charteris. Yet he has done with
us--at last!"

She said this with an inhalation of the breath; but she did not look at
him.

"Take care!" he said, with an unreasonable harshness. "For I forewarn
you I am imagining vain things."

"I'm not afraid, somehow." But Anne did not look at him.

He saw as with a rending shock how like the widow of John Charteris was
to Anne Willoughby; and unforgotten pulses, very strange and irrational
and dear, perplexed him sorely. He debated, and flung aside the
cigarette as an out-moded detail of his hobbling part.

"You say I did a noble thing for you. I tried to. But quixotism has its
price. To-day I am not quite the man who did that thing. John Charteris
has set his imprint too deep upon us. We served his pleasure. We are not
any longer the boy and girl who loved each other."

She waited in the rising twilight with a yet averted face. The world was
motionless, ineffably expectant, as it seemed to him. And the
disposition