lux of time, and Midmore lent him another fiver for his integrity.
A woman took him, in the wet forenoon, to a pronouncement on the Oneness
of Impulse in Humanity, which struck him as a polysyllabic _resume_ of
Mr. Sidney's domestic arrangements, plus a clarion call to 'shock
civilisation into common-sense.'

'And you'll come to tea with me to-morrow?' she asked, after lunch,
nibbling cashew nuts from a saucer. Midmore replied that there were
great arrears of work to overtake when a man had been put away for
so long.

'But you've come back like a giant refreshed.... I hope that
Daphne'--this was the lady of the twelve and the eight-page
letter--'will be with us too. She has misunderstood herself, like so
many of us,' the woman murmured, 'but I think eventually ...' she flung
out her thin little hands. 'However, these are things that each lonely
soul must adjust for itself.'

'Indeed, yes,' said Midmore with a deep sigh. The old tricks were
sprouting in the old atmosphere like mushrooms in a dung-pit. He passed
into an abrupt reverie, shook his head, as though stung by tumultuous
memories, and departed without any ceremony of farewell to--catch a
mid-afternoon express where a man meets associates who talk horse, and
weather as it affects the horse, all the way down. What worried him most
was that he had missed a day with the hounds.

He met Rhoda's keen old eyes without flinching; and the drawing-room
looked very comfortable that wet evening at tea. After all, his visit to
town had not been wholly a failure. He had burned quite a bushel of
letters at his flat. A flat--here he reached mechanically towards the
worn volumes near the sofa--a flat was a consuming animal. As for
Daphne ... he opened at random on the words: 'His lordship then did as
desired and disclosed a _tableau_ of considerable strength and variety.'
Midmore reflected: 'And I used to think.... But she wasn't.... We were
all babblers and skirters together.... I didn't babble much--thank
goodness--but I skirted.' He turned the pages backward for more _Sortes
Surteesianae_, and read: 'When at length they rose to go to bed it
struck each man as he followed his neighbour upstairs, that the man
before him walked very crookedly.' He laughed aloud at the fire.

'What about to-morrow?' Rhoda asked, entering with garments over her
shoulder. 'It's never stopped raining since you left. You'll be
plastered out of sight an' all in five minutes. You'd better wear you