ay back. In a few minutes his traps were on the roof, and he was being
driven to the station.

* * * * *

It was a serene summer night, and the crossing was ideal. As he
promenaded the deck, and looked into the spacious darkness, and let the
breeze play free about his face, the sense of strain and fatigue, all
the broken feeling that remained from the stress of his tussle with the
world, seemed to be swept away. His early manhood, when he had gone to
and fro as he listed, began to stir in him again, and the consciousness
of mature power and ripe experience which were now added to it awakened
an almost overweening sense of well-being and confidence.

The episode of his broken engagement already began to look absurd rather
than tragic in this new spirited mood of his. The whole thing seemed
beneath his dignity. Of course, in some ways, he would always look back
upon it as a bitterly unpleasant incident; but, in this life, you were
necessarily called upon to be a stoic in some degree. The point was to
choose the degree yourself. In face of unpleasant things stoicism was no
doubt the wisest; but where good things were concerned it was best to
preserve all the fresh feelings of the natural human being.

The Robinsons were already receding into the mists of distance. Despite
the reality and the closeness of his connection with them, they were
taking their place among the shadows that peopled the past. His own
vision was turned forward--ever forward!

"Strange," he thought, "how things and people cease to have any
consequence, once you have turned your back upon them!"

The night passed like a dream. In the train from Calais to Paris he
dozed lightly, and woke only at dawn. The sky was cloudless and
wonderfully blue, but the sun shone as yet coldly over the landscape,
and the fat fields sparkled with dew. Save for the quiet herds of
cattle, the world was deserted. Immediately all his faculties were
pleasurably alert again. He noticed with delight the hamlets and
sleeping villages, the still wayside stations where moustachioed old
women, who surely dated from the Revolution, stood on guard with flags
at the cross-ways. At last they were running through the environs of the
capital, and Wyndham tasted the sensation of entering the great city of
light and intellect as keenly as in his jubilant boyhood.

The drive through Paris in the early morning was exhilarating and
enchanting. At that hour