times when the
ostentation and entertaining at Taborley House had become too much for
her; this nest of refuge had been her secret--her place of retreat where
she had regarnered her sincerities. She had loved the Square's
old-fashioned primness, its tininess, its unchanging atmosphere of rest.
It was scarcely invaded by the strum of London. In the cloud of
greenness which drifted above its communal garden, one could still
listen to the country sounds of birds. At the back gray religion spoke
in the tolling bell of the Parish Church; through Sabbath stillnesses
one could catch the pealing of the organ in the Oratory and the mutter
of worshipers at prayer. Tabs had kept the house as she had left it. It
was something faithful to which to return, however much he failed in the
search for his kingdom and however far he wandered.

However much he failed! This first day of freedom had been anything but
successful. He felt as though every hope that he had had had been
blotted out; that morning he had had no plan for the future which had
not included Terry. What would be the upshot? Would Braithwaite accept
his challenge to visit him? If he did, what then? He, Tabs, couldn't
very well ask his ex-valet, merely because he was his ex-valet, to
desist from loving the same girl. He had no doubt that Braithwaite, in
his new incarnation as a General, did dare to love her. He had little
doubt that Terry had shown herself at least susceptible to the glamor of
his infatuation. How far had the matter gone between them? There lay the
guess.

He searched back, trying to piece together phrases which would indicate
the correct answer. There was her disturbing confession about having
given away bits of herself, little bits of herself in wrong directions.
There was her reticence as to the ownership of the car and the way in
which she had tried to prevent a meeting. There was her sympathy for
Maisie's matrimonial excesses; her unnatural tolerance for Adair; her
reiterated excuse for the current love-madness, that people had the
right at any cost to be happy; and the eagerness with which she had
seized on his own words, "to recover our lost years by violence." In the
silence of his brain he heard her voice pleading, urgent with pain and
underlying terror, "Don't you see why I don't condemn? I'm sorry for
you, for myself, for everybody." His knowledge of the world told him
that impassioned latitudinarians were most frequently found among those
wh