ff
his feet and on the point of a confession. "If any man were to play
false by Terry, I think--I think I'd brain him."

Sir Tobias half-closed his eyes and regarded his guest with sleepy
approval. "I somehow knew," he said slowly, "that that was how you
felt." Then he opened his eyes wide and darted forward in his chair, as
though to trace exactly the effect of his words. He was full of tricks
and contradictions, obstinacies and tendernesses, this Punch-like old
gentleman with the head of Shakespeare. "I knew that was how you felt,"
he continued, "because you've seen all the love that has gone to their
making. You were already a big fellow when they were still tiny. Wasn't
it Terry who first called you Tabs because her tongue couldn't get round
Taborley? Ah, I've been so proud of my girls! They were so little and
white when they first came to us. They couldn't walk--not a step. One
had to carry them everywhere. Then they began to crawl; they couldn't
stand up right unless one gave them his hand. And then at last they
walked. They walked by one's side at first and soon got tired. But as
they grew stronger, they walked away and away, always getting more
incomprehensible, till finally--it hasn't happened to Terry yet--till
finally they met a man. Wait till you're a father, Lord Taborley; from
the moment you give all that whiteness into another's keeping, you never
cease to be jealous of him. He can never appreciate what a gift you have
made him. He never saw her when she was little and helpless. She's your
youth--she's everything vigorous that you were. The first time he
affords you with a reason for hating him, you'll hate him like---- The
way you said: so that you could brain him without compunction.
Adair----I could cheerfully kill him."

Tabs felt rather than heard the pent-up passion in his voice; it alarmed
him with its sincerity. "But mayn't you be exaggerating?" he suggested.
"Are you sure that Adair---- What I mean to say is, he may be only
philandering. Heaps of men do that--go through all the motions of making
fools of themselves and actually do nothing. He may be only expressing
the discontent of the moment, the revolt from suspense, the flatness of
quiet after terrible excitements. One didn't need to be a fighting-man
to share those excitements. You say that Phyllis made a nest of her
home. Perhaps he didn't like nests. It may be that that's done it. Adair
can't have altered so radically over night; he wasn'