ner on crutches. He was not to try and use his foot for some weeks
still, but the cut on his head was mended now. It was a glorious July
evening, the roses were not over on the terrace, and every aspect of
nature was gorgeously beautiful and peaceful.

They did not delay long over their repast, and there was still twilight
when Mrs. and Miss Clinker left their invalid alone with his wine. A
letter was in his pocket, arrived by the evening post from Mrs.
Cricklander, which he had not yet opened. It would contain her
reflections upon his changed conditions of fortune, of which he had,
when he learned of its full magnitude, duly informed her.

He was alternately raging with misery now, or perfectly numb and, as he
sat there a shattered wreck of his former _insouciant_ self, gaunt and
haggard and pitifully thin, some of his friends would hardly have
recognized him.

He felt it was his duty to read the missive presently, but he told
himself the lights were too dim, and taking a cigar he hobbled out upon
the terrace. His return to public life would now be too late to help to
avert disaster, he must just stand aside in these last weeks of the
session and see the shipwreck. An unspeakable bitterness invaded his
spirit. The moon was rising when he got outside, one day beyond its
full. It seemed like a golden ball in the twilight of opal tints, before
it should rise in its silver majesty to supreme command of the night.
Nature was in one of her most sensuously divine moods. The summer and
fulfillment had come.

John Derringham sat down in a comfortable chair and gazed in front of
him.

There had been moonlight, too, when he had spent those exquisite hours
with his love, now six weeks ago--a young half moon. Could it be only
six weeks? A lifetime of anguish appeared to have rolled between. And
where was she? Then, for the first time, the crust of his
self-absorption seemed to crumble, and he thought with new stabs of pain
how she, too, must have suffered. He began to picture her waiting by the
gate--she would be brave and quiet. And then, as the day passed--what
had she done? He could not imagine, but she must have suffered
intolerably. When could she have heard of the accident, since the next
day she had been taken away? Why had she gone? That was unlike her, to
have given in to any force which could separate them. And if he had
known this step also was unconsciously caused by his own action in
having his letter to Cheiron