too dazzling.

"You are like so many of the men who work for us," she said. "You are
just a little tired, aren't you? You come down here to rest, and I dig
up all the old problems and ask you to vex yourself with them. We must
talk about slighter things. You are going to shoot here this
season--perhaps hunt, later on?"

"I do not think so," he answered. "I have forgotten what sports mean.
I may take a gun out sometimes. There is a little shooting that goes
with the Manor, but very few birds, I believe. The last ten years seem
to have driven all those things out of one's mind."

"Don't you think that you are inclined to take life a little too
earnestly?" she asked. "One should have amusements."

"I may feel the necessity," he replied, "but it is not easy to take up
one's earlier pleasures at my time of life."

"Don't think me inquisitive," she went on, "but, as I told you, I have
looked you up in one of those wonderful books which tell us everything
about everybody. You were a Double Blue at Oxford."

"Racquets and cricket," he assented. "Neither of them much use to me
now."

"Racquets would help you with lawn tennis," she said, "but beyond that I
find that not a dozen years ago you were a scratch golfer, and you
certainly won the amateur championship of Italy."

"It is eleven years since I touched a club," he told her.

"Then you ought to be ashamed of yourself," she declared. "Games are
part of an Englishman's life, and when he neglects them altogether there
is something wrong. I shall insist upon your taking up lawn tennis
again. I have two beautiful courts there, and very seldom any one to
play with who has the least idea of the game."

His eyes rested for a moment upon the smoothly shaven lawns.

"So you think that regeneration may come to me through lawn tennis?" he
murmured.

"And why not? You are taking yourself far too seriously, you know. How
do you expect regeneration to come?"

"Shall I tell you what it is I lack?" he answered suddenly. "Incentive.
I think my will has suddenly grown flabby, the ego in me unresponsive.
You know the moods in which one asks oneself whether it is worth while,
whether anything is worth while. Well, I am there at the crossroads. I
think I feel more inclined to look for a seat than to go on."

"The strongest of us need to rest sometimes," she agreed quietly.

He relapsed into a silence so apparently deliberate that she accepted it
as a respite for herself also. Fr