see him kiss Clare like that, but, at the same time,
for his part, kissing...!

"And Robin?" said Harry.

"Here's the son and heir," said Garrett, laughing, and pushing Robin
forward.

Now that the moment had really come, Robin was most unpleasantly
embarrassed. How foolish of Uncle Garrett to try and be funny at a
time like that, and what a pity it was that his tie was sticking out at
one end so much farther than at the other. He felt his hand seized and
crushed in the grip of a giant; he murmured something about his being
pleased, and then, suddenly, his father bent down and kissed him on the
forehead.

They were both blushing, Robin furiously. How he hated sentiment! He
felt sure that Uncle Garrett was laughing at him.

"By Jove, you're splendid!" said Harry, holding him back with both his
hands on his shoulders. "Pretty different from the nipper that I sent
over to England eighteen years ago. Oh, you'll do, Robin."

"And now, Harry," said Clare, laughing, "you'll go and dress, won't
you? Father's terribly hungry and the train was late."

"Right," said Harry; "I won't be long. It's good to be back again."

When the door had closed behind him, there was silence. He gave the
impression of some one filled with overwhelming, rapturous joy. There
was a light in his eyes that told of dreams at length fulfilled, and
hopes, long and wearily postponed, at last realised. He had filled
that stiff, solemn room with a spirit of life and strength and sheer
animal good health--it was even, as Clare afterwards privately
confessed, a little exhausting.

Now she stood by the fireplace, smiling a little. "My poor rose," she
said, looking at some of the petals that had fallen to the ground.
"Harry is strong!"

"He is looking well," said Garrett. It sounded almost sarcastic.

Robin went up to his room to change his tie--he had said nothing about
his father.

As Harry Trojan passed down the well-remembered passages where the
pictures hung in the same odd familiar places, past staircases
vanishing into dark abysses that had frightened him as a child, windows
deep-set in the thick stone walls, corners round which he had crept in
the dark on his way to his room, it seemed to him that those long,
dreary years of patient waiting in New Zealand were as nothing, and
that it was only yesterday that he had passed down that same way, his
heart full of rage against his father, his one longing to get out and
away to othe