m there he hired a motor-car
and spent a fortnight at Aix. He reached London early in May, to find
Dauncey unchanged and his own affairs prosperous. During all this time
he had had no word of or from Sybil Bultiwell. He went almost directly
to his cottage at Marlingden, where he found Mrs. Harris eagerly
awaiting his arrival, and over the supper table, Dauncey and he and a
rejuvenated Nora talked over that evening when the two men had arrived
home in the motor-car, laden with strange packages and overflowing
with their marvellous news.

"Life has been so wonderful ever since," Nora murmured. "Dick looks
ten years younger, and I feel it. The children you can see for
yourself. I wonder," she went on a little timidly, as she realised
her host's peculiar aversion to expressed gratitude, "I wonder whether
you ever realise, Jacob, what it means to have taken two people from a
struggle which was becoming misery and to have made them utterly and
completely happy."...

Jacob thought of her words as he lingered for an hour in his little
sitting-room that night. His own memory travelled backwards. He
realised the joy which he had felt at paying his debts, the even
greater joy of saving the Daunceys from despair. He thought again of
the small pleasures which his affluence had brought, the sense of
complacency, almost of dignity, which it had engendered. There were
many men, he knew, who thought him the most fortunate amongst all
their acquaintance. And was he, he wondered? He looked across at the
light in the Daunceys' bedroom and saw it extinguished. He looked back
with a sigh to his empty room. He had read many books since the days
of his prosperity, but books had never meant very much to him. He
realised, in those moments of introspection, his weakness and his
failure. His inclinations were all intensely human. He loved kind
words, happy faces, flowers and children. He was one of those for whom
the joys and gaieties of the demimonde were a farce, to whom the
delights of the opposite sex could only present themselves in the form
of one person and in one manner. He was full of sentiments, full of
easily offended prejudices. Fate had placed in his hands the power to
command a life which might have been as varied as grand opera, and all
that he desired was the life which Dauncey had found and was living.

Upstairs were the Harrises, sleeping together in comfort and
happiness, the creatures of his bounty, his grateful and faithful