alised that I couldn't write poetry. After
that I cut my hair and joined the Wine Club. I stroked the Torpid and
rowed three in my College Eight. I had friends for the first time. One
above all"

He stopped over-abruptly. Stella Croyle had the impression of a careless
sentinel suddenly waked, suddenly standing to attention at the door of a
treasure-house of memories. She was challenged. Very well. It was her
humour to take the challenge up just to prove to herself that she could
slip past a man's guard if the spirit moved her. She turned on Hillyard
a pair of most friendly sympathetic eyes.

"Tell me of your friend."

"Oh, there's not much to tell. He rowed in the same boat with me. He had
just what I had not--traditions. From his small old brown manor-house in
a western county to his very choice of a career, he was wrapped about in
tradition. He went into the army. He had to go."

"What is his name?"

Stella Croyle interrupted him. She was not looking at him any more. She
was staring into the fire, and her body was very still. But there was
excitement in her voice.

"Harry Luttrell," replied Hillyard, and Stella Croyle did not move. "I
don't know what has become of him. You see, I had ninety pounds left out
of the thousand when I left Oxford. So I just dived."

"But you have come up again now. You will resume your friends at the
point where you dived."

"Not yet. I am going away in a week's time."

"For long?"

"Eight months."

"And far?"

"Very."

"I am sorry," said Stella.

It had been the intention of Hillyard to use his first months of real
freedom in a great wandering amongst wide spaces. The journey had been
long since planned, even details of camp outfit and equipment and the
calibre of rifles considered.

"I have been at my preparations for years," he said. "I lived in a
cubbyhole in Westminster, writing and writing and writing, but when I
thought of this journey to be, certain to be, the walls would dissolve,
and I would walk in magical places under the sun."

"Now the New Year reviving old desires,
The thoughtful soul to solitude retires"

Stella Croyle quoted the verses gaily, and Hillyard, lost in the
anticipation of his journey, never noticed that the gaiety rang false.

"And where are you going?" she asked.

"To the Sudan."

It seemed that Stella expected just that answer and no other. She gazed
into the fire without moving, seeking to piece together a picture in the