him an infinite regret.

He saw again certain lovely park-lands--the woods and hills and
dales--of a rich inheritance that should have been his. He saw
himself, the gay guardsman. He saw the dear face of the woman for whom
he had chosen to cross that arbitrary will which would brook no
disobedience, and sought to intimidate him with disinheritance.
Through his mind passed in slurred detail the sordid story which had
given him a brother's hate in return for a quixotic championing of the
weak--a hate which proved to have power enough behind it to draw a
devastating hand across the promise of his future.

Lastly--and here in the silence it was as though his head sank deeper
in its pain--he saw that woman's dear face, as he had last seen it,
lying white upon the heather--_dead_.

Ah, the memories were terribly alive to-day; not even fifteen years in
a new life, with new interests, had done anything but draw a thin
curtain of silence over the unforgettable pain. Would anything ever
ease it in reality? Had he for a moment believed that it would? Or had
he always known, that just as surely as his hand had held the gun
which killed her, so to his last breath the tragedy would cast a
shadow over the whole of his life?

He might look out upon the world with quiet eyes and firm lips and
fearless mien, but the gnawing ache would surely go with him to his
grave.

And because of it he knew that he had grown somewhat churlish; that
men who did not understand his unsociable ways and extreme reticence
looked at him askance. But what of it? How little such things
mattered! The tragedy was his and the silence was his, and he had
never asked anyone to share either.

Only to-day, for just this one afternoon, fifteen years was as
yesterday, and he seemed to realise thoroughly for the first time all
that royal hand-clasp had meant, before he went to his voluntary exile
in a far wilderness.

But after a time, when it grew cool enough to walk, he came out into
the sunshine and started off towards the steep rock pathway that leads
to the summit of the Acropolis Hill, following an impulse to seek
comfort in the fresh hopefulness of a height, and to lessen the pain
in his heart by looking out across a world still living and loving and
striving. So he climbed on up the winding pathway, enfolded with
mystery and romance concerning the feet that trod it in the far-off
centuries, and made his way between the mighty natural boulders out on
to