dden, his wide black eyes blinking at
the sweet pale June sky. No chance of death for him: he was good
for ten, twenty, fifty years more: he could not bear it, but it
had to be borne. He tried to pull himself up: if he could only
have reached the window! But the arms that felt so strong were
as weak as an infant's, while the dead weight of his helpless
legs dragged on him like lead. The only result of his struggle
was a dreadful access of pain. Reaction followed, for he had
learnt in his A B C days not to whimper when he was hurt, and by
the time the nurse returned Clowes had scourged himself back to
his usual savage tranquillity. "Can I have that window shut,
please?" he asked, cynically frank. "I used to play cricket
myself."

Laura Clowes in this period went through an experience almost
equally formative. Two years older than Bernard, she was also
more mature for her years and had developed more evenly, and from
the outset her engagement and marriage had meant more to her then
to Bernard, because her girlhood had been unhappy and they provided
a way of escape. Her sister Yvonne had met Jack Bendish at a
race-meeting and he had fallen madly in love with her and married
her in a month in the teeth of opposition. That was luck--heaven-sent
luck, for Yvonne on the night before her marriage had broken down
utterly and confessed that if Jack had not saved her she would have
gone off with the first man who asked her on any terms, because she
was twenty-nine and sick to death of wandering with her father on the
outskirts of society. Subsequently Yvonne had after a hard fight won
a footing at Wharton for herself and her sister, and there Laura had
met Clowes, not such a social prize as Jack, but rich and able to
give his wife an assured position. She was shrewd and realized that
in himself he had little to offer beyond a handsome and highly
trained physique and a mind that worked lucidly within the limits of
a narrow imagination but she was beyond all words grateful to him,
and he fascinated her more than she realized.

The ten days at Eastbourne opened her eyes. Bernard enjoyed
every minute of them and was exceedingly pleased with himself
and proud of his wife, but for Laura they were a time of heavy
strain. Innocent and shy, she had feared her husband, only to
discover that she loved him better than he was capable of loving
her. Laura was not blind. She understood Bernard and all his
limitations, the dang