ed up his coat, slung it on, and, heaving a straw bag
over his shoulder, walked out on to the grass-bordered road between the
elms.

"Tryst! Bob Tryst!"

At the gate of a creepered cottage amongst fruit-trees, high above the
road, a youth with black hair and pale-brown face stood beside a girl
with frizzy brown hair and cheeks like poppies.

"Have you had that notice?"

The laborer answered slowly:

"Yes, Mr. Derek. If she don't go, I've got to."

"What a d--d shame!"

The laborer moved his head, as though he would have spoken, but no words
came.

"Don't do anything, Bob. We'll see about that."

"Evenin', Mr. Derek. Evenin', Miss Sheila," and the laborer moved on.

The two at the wicket gate also turned away. A black-haired woman
dressed in blue came to the wicket gate in their place. There seemed no
purpose in her standing there; it was perhaps an evening custom, some
ceremony such as Moslems observe at the muezzin-call. And any one who
saw her would have wondered what on earth she might be seeing, gazing
out with her dark glowing eyes above the white, grass-bordered roads
stretching empty this way and that between the elm-trees and green
fields; while the blackbirds and thrushes shouted out their hearts,
calling all to witness how hopeful and young was life in this English
countryside....

CHAPTER I

Mayday afternoon in Oxford Street, and Felix Freeland, a little late,
on his way from Hampstead to his brother John's house in Porchester
Gardens. Felix Freeland, author, wearing the very first gray top hat of
the season. A compromise, that--like many other things in his life
and works--between individuality and the accepted view of things,
aestheticism and fashion, the critical sense and authority. After the
meeting at John's, to discuss the doings of the family of his brother
Morton Freeland--better known as Tod--he would perhaps look in on the
caricatures at the English Gallery, and visit one duchess in Mayfair,
concerning the George Richard Memorial. And so, not the soft felt hat
which really suited authorship, nor the black top hat which obliterated
personality to the point of pain, but this gray thing with narrowish
black band, very suitable, in truth, to a face of a pale buff color, to
a moustache of a deep buff color streaked with a few gray hairs, to a
black braided coat cut away from a buff-colored waistcoat, to his neat
boots--not patent leather--faintly buffed with May-day dust. Even hi