many sides to it; and they came
and went so oddly. One minute, a very brute-beast in his ferocity, the
next, a woman in his tenderness and a poet in his thoughts. But if the
boy was puzzled, he was, at least, discreet. He put nothing into words:
merely walked on in silence, and left the man to his thoughts and the
nightingales to their melody.

And Cleek was unusually thoughtful from that period onward; speaking
hardly a word through all the journey home. For now that the events
which had occupied his mind for the past two or three days were over and
done with, his memory harked back to those things which had to do with
his own affairs, and he caught himself wondering how matters had gone
with Ailsa Lorne; which of the two positions--the English one or the
French--she had finally elected to apply for; and if time had as yet
softened the shock of that disclosure made in the mist and darkness at
Hampstead Heath.

He had, of course, heard nothing of her since that time; and the days he
had spent at Richmond had utterly precluded the possibility of giving
himself that small pleasure--so often indulged in--of adopting a safe
disguise, prowling about the neighbourhood where she lived until she
should come forth upon one errand or another, and then following her,
unsuspected.

That she could have taken the knowledge of what he once had been in no
other way than she had done; that to such a woman, such a man must at
the first blush be an object of abhorrence--a thing to be put out of her
life as completely and as expeditiously as possible--he fully realised;
yet, at bottom, he was conscious of a hope that Time--even so little as
had passed--might lend a softening influence that should lead eventually
to Pity, and from that to a day when the word Forgiveness might be
spoken.

He wanted that forgiveness--the soul of the man needed it, as parched
plants need water. He had not climbed up out of himself without some
struggle, some moments when he wavered between what he had become, and
what Nature had written that he was meant to be; for no Soul is purged
all in a moment, no man may conquer himself with just one solitary
fight. He needed her forgiveness, the thought of her, the hope of her,
to rivet his armour for the long, brave fight. He needed her
Friendship--if he might never have her love he needed _that_. And if she
were to pass like this from his life.... If the Light were to go out ...
and all the long, dark way of the