ped me
to set back my clock of life more than twenty years, and that is an
achievement of which I feel justly proud."

* * * * *

VII

* * * * *

Sunday morning found the party possessed of divers minds regarding the
proper use to make of the wonderful sunshine and the mild yet bracing
air, delicately scented with thousands of blooms on every side. Mr. and
Mrs. Thatcher announced definitely that they proposed to hear the band
concert at the Barracks, which gave a certain basis upon which to hang
other plans. Billy Huntington suggested to Merry that they walk to Elba
Beach, and Cosden, with the cordial disapproval of Edith Stevens and
Billy, invited himself to accompany the young people on their walk.
Huntington accounted for himself by reporting that Hamlen had
telephoned, asking him to make the promised visit that morning, so the
Stevenses joined forces with the Thatchers, and the plans were complete.

Hamlen was visibly ill at ease when Huntington arrived. It was the only
time during the twenty years of his residence there that any guest had
been received at his villa by invitation of its owner. The new
experience excited him, but the sincerity of Huntington's admiration of
the grounds, and the friendliness of his attitude, made it impossible
for any barrier long to exist between them. A touch of the old-time
bitterness passed through Hamlen's mind, soon after Huntington's
arrival, as he thought what it would have meant to him during any one of
those four years at college to have had Monty Huntington come to his
room in the same spirit of comradeship! Yet, he admitted to himself, the
tragedies of that small world did lose some of their poignancy in
retrospect, just as Huntington had said. He had been at a disadvantage
in that the world into which he had been graduated was not the great
world of which his classmate spoke, but rather another little one,
smaller even than that which had tortured him,--so small that he had
remained still instead of growing, as the others had, into an estate
from which he might look back with broader vision.

This much at least had borne fruit from the conversation at the hotel,
but beyond this there was an impression still deeper which increased
Hamlen's spirit of unrest. From the time when he began to feel things
strongly there had existed in him a sense of justice which completely
dominated his other attributes