."

Gratian shook her head. "No, you thought my mind was yours; and now you
think it's George's. But it's my own. When you were my age weren't you
trying hard to find the truth yourself, and differing from your father?"

Pierson did not answer. He could not remember. It was like stirring
a stick amongst a drift of last year's leaves, to awaken but a dry
rustling, a vague sense of unsubstantiality. Searched? No doubt he had
searched, but the process had brought him nothing. Knowledge was all
smoke! Emotional faith alone was truth--reality!

"Ah, Gracie!" he said, "search if you must, but where will you find
bottom? The well is too deep for us. You will come back to God, my
child, when you're tired out; the only rest is there."

"I don't want to rest. Some people search all their lives, and die
searching. Why shouldn't I.

"You will be most unhappy, my child."

"If I'm unhappy, Dad, it'll be because the world's unhappy. I don't
believe it ought to be; I think it only is, because it shuts its eyes."

Pierson got up. "You think I shut my eyes?"

Gratian nodded.

"If I do, it is because there is no other way to happiness."

"Are you happy; Dad?"

"As happy as my nature will let me be. I miss your mother. If I lose you
and Noel--"

"Oh, but we won't let you!"

Pierson smiled. "My dear," he said, "I think I have!"

VIII

1

Some wag, with a bit of chalk, had written the word "Peace" on three
successive doors of a little street opposite Buckingham Palace.

It caught the eye of Jimmy Fort, limping home to his rooms from a very
late discussion at his Club, and twisted his lean shaven lips into a
sort of smile. He was one of those rolling-stone Englishmen, whose early
lives are spent in all parts of the world, and in all kinds of physical
conflict--a man like a hickory stick, tall, thin, bolt-upright, knotty,
hard as nails, with a curved fighting back to his head and a straight
fighting front to his brown face. His was the type which becomes, in
a generation or so, typically Colonial or American; but no one could
possibly have taken Jimmy Fort for anything but an Englishman. Though
he was nearly forty, there was still something of the boy in his face,
something frank and curly-headed, gallant and full of steam, and his
small steady grey eyes looked out on life with a sort of combative
humour. He was still in uniform, though they had given him up as a bad
job after keeping him nine months trying to mend