this lure of Youth and Life and Love that
was dragging at him, into the man's face the state of his own heart, it
might lay that feeling to rest. Anything to get it out of himself!
And he worked furiously, laboriously, all October, making no great
progress.... What could he expect when Life was all the time knocking
with that muffled tapping at his door?

It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket meeting,
and just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and walked in. She wore
a dark-red dress, a new one, and surely her face--her figure--were very
different from what he had remembered! They had quickened and become
poignant. She was no longer a child--that was at once plain. Cheeks,
mouth, neck, waist--all seemed fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown
hair was coiled up now under a velvet cap; only the great grey eyes
seemed quite the same. And at sight of her his heart gave a sort of dive
and flight, as if all its vague and wistful sensations had found their
goal.

Then, in sudden agitation, he realized that his last moment with this
girl--now a child no longer--had been a secret moment of warmth and of
emotion; a moment which to her might have meant, in her might have bred,
feelings that he had no inkling of. He tried to ignore that fighting and
diving of his heart, held out his hand, and murmured:

"Ah, Nell! Back at last! You've grown." Then, with a sensation of every
limb gone weak, he felt her arms round his neck, and herself pressed
against him. There was time for the thought to flash through him: This
is terrible! He gave her a little convulsive squeeze--could a man do
less?--then just managed to push her gently away, trying with all his
might to think: She's a child! It's nothing more than after Carmen! She
doesn't know what I am feeling! But he was conscious of a mad desire to
clutch her to him. The touch of her had demolished all his vagueness,
made things only too plain, set him on fire.

He said uncertainly:

"Come to the fire, my child, and tell me all about it."

If he did not keep to the notion that she was just a child, his head
would go. Perdita--'the lost one'! A good name for her, indeed, as she
stood there, her eyes shining in the firelight--more mesmeric than ever
they had been! And, to get away from the lure of those eyes, he bent
down and raked the grate, saying:

"Have you seen Sylvia?" But he knew that she had not, even before she
gave that impatient shrug. Then he p