ing's utter rubbish. You make too much
of your ribbon: you--I--it would never have been given if Dale's
father hadn't been a brass hat."

Stafford was ashy pale. "I know you think you're just."

"No, I don't. I'm not just, my good chap: I'm weakly, idiotically
generous. In your heart of hearts you're grateful to me. Now
let's drop all this. Nothing you can say will have the slightest
effect, so you may as well not say it." He stood by Val's chair,
laughing down at him and gently gripping him by the shoulder.
"Be a man, Val! you're not nineteen now. You've got a comfortable
job and the esteem of all who know you--take it and be thankful:
it's more than you deserve. If you must indulge in a hair shirt,
wear it under your clothes. It isn't necessary to embarrass other
people by undressing in public."

Thought is free: one may be at a man's mercy and in his debt and
keep one's own opinion of him, impersonal and cold. With a faint
smile on his lips Val got up and strolled over to the piano.
"Hullo, what's all this music lying about?" he said in his
ordinary manner. "Has Laura been playing? Good, I'm so glad:
Bernard can hardly ever stand it. See the first fruits of your
bracing influence! Oh, the Polonaises . . ." And then he in
his turn began to play, but not the melancholy fiery lyrics that
had soothed Laura's unsatisfied heart. Val, a thorough musician,
went for sympathy to the classics. Impulsive? There was not
much impulse left in this quiet, reticent man, who with his old
trouble fresh on him could sit down and play a chorale of Bach or
a prelude of Mozart, subordinating his own imperious anguish to
the grave universal daylight of the elder masters. Long since
Val had resolved that no shadow from him should fall across any
other life. He had foresworn "that impure passion of remorse,"
and so keen an observer as Rowsley had grown up in his intimacy
without suspecting anything wrong. Unfortunately for Val,
however, he still suffered, though he was now denied all
expression, all relief: the wounded mind bled inwardly. It was
no wonder Val's hair was turning grey.

Lawrence, no mean judge of music, understood much--not all--of
the significance of Val's playing. He was an imaginative man--
far more so than Val, who would have lived an ordinary life and
travelled on ordinary lines of thought but for the war, which
wrenched so many men out of their natural development. But it
was again unfortunate