he would retire from government
employ and open that private and personal practice which it was his
ambition to establish.

And now Mark was taking holiday on Dartmoor, devoting himself to
his hobby of trout fishing and accepting the opportunity to survey
his own life from a bird's-eye point of view, measure his
achievement, and consider impartially his future, not only as a
detective but as a man.

Mark had reached a turning point, or rather a point from which new
interests and new personal plans were likely to present themselves
upon the theatre of a life hitherto devoted to one drama alone.
Until now he had existed for his work only. Since the war he had
been again occupied with routine labour on cases of darkness, doubt,
and crime, once more living only that he might resolve these
mysteries, with no personal interest at all outside his grim
occupation. He had been a machine as innocent of any inner life, any
spiritual ambition or selfish aim, as a pair of handcuffs.

This assiduity and single-hearted devotion had brought their
temporal reward. He was now at last in position to enlarge his
outlook, consider higher aspects of life, and determine to be a man
as well as a machine.

He found himself with five thousand pounds saved as a result of some
special grants during the war and a large honorarium from the French
Government. He was also in possession of a handsome salary and the
prospect of promotion, when a senior man retired at no distant date.
Too intelligent to find all that life had to offer in his work
alone, he now began to think of culture, of human pleasures, and
those added interests and responsibilities that a wife and family
would offer.

He knew very few women--none who awakened any emotion of affection.
Indeed at five-and-twenty he had told himself that marriage must be
ruled out of his calculations, since his business made life
precarious and was also of a nature to be unduly complicated if a
woman shared it with him. Love, he had reasoned, might lessen his
powers of concentration, blunt his extraordinary special faculties,
perhaps even introduce an element of calculation and actual
cowardice before great alternatives, and so shadow his powers and
modify his future success. But now, ten years later, he thought
otherwise, found himself willing to receive impressions, ready even
to woo and wed if the right girl should present herself. He dreamed
of some well-educated woman who would lighten his