almost wonder you came back
so soon. Was not it rather unwise? This treacherous climate, you
know."

"Yes," said Rainham; "I, too, think you are right. I think I had
much better have stayed--very much better."

"Ah, well," he said, "you must take care of yourself, and give us a
look in if you have time."

Eve looked up at him, flushing a little, as though she found her
brother's formal politeness lacking in hospitality. She was struck
then, as she had not been yet during her visit, by a curious
lassitude in her old friend's face. It affected her with an
unconscious pity, causing her to second her brother's somewhat
chilly invitation more cordially.

The humour which had shone in Rainham's eyes while they had been
talking seemed to have gone out suddenly, like a lamp, leaving them
blank and tired. It shocked her to realize how old and ill he had
become.

CHAPTER VI

Indolence and ill-health, in the opinion of many the salient points
in Philip Rainham's character, had left him at forty with little of
the social habit. The circle of his intimates had sensibly narrowed,
and for the rest he was becoming more and more conscious that people
whom one does not know exceedingly well are not worth knowing at
all. The process of dining out two or three times a week in the
company of two or three persons whose claims on his attention were
of the slenderest he found a process attended with less and less
pleasure the older he grew. There were few houses now which he
frequented, and this year, when he had made an effort to devote a
couple of evenings to the renewal of some acquaintance of the
winter, and had discovered, as he had discovered anew each season,
that the effort gave him no appreciable compensations for the
disagreeables it involved, he made fresh resolutions of abstinence,
and on the whole he kept them amazingly well.

For the most part, when he was not routed out by Lightmark (and
since the young artist was in train to become a social acquisition
this happened less frequently than of old), it was at Blackpool that
he spent his evenings. He had, it is true, a standing invitation to
dinner at Lady Garnett's when that old lady found herself at home;
but Portman Square was remote, and evening dress, to a man with one
lung in a climate which had so fickle a trick of registering itself
either at the extreme top or bottom of the thermometer, presented
various discomforts. His den behind the office--a little
sit