and varied emotions.

At the time of their parting he had been absorbed in his own selfish
sensations of anger, revolt, and the sharp sense of loss, savagely glad
that she was unhappy too. But after he had gone, after he had plunged
into the new, to him exciting and curious, life of the great vessel
taking him to Australia, he had forced himself to put Betty out of his
mind, and, after a few days, he had started a violent flirtation with the
most attractive woman on board the liner. The flirtation had developed,
by the time they reached Sydney, into a serious affair, and had been the
determining cause why he had not written even to George. Godfrey Radmore
had not thought of that woman for years. But to-night her now hateful,
meretricious image rose, with horrid vividness, before him. It had been
an ugly, debasing episode, and had dragged on and on, as such episodes
have a way of doing.

Wrenching his mind free of that odious memory, he looked across at Betty.
Yes, it was at once a relief and something of a disappointment to feel
her, too, transformed into a stranger. For one thing she had had, when
he had last seen her, a great deal of long fair hair. But she had cut it
off when starting her arduous war work, and the lack of it altered her
amazingly, all the more that she did not wear her short hair "bobbed," in
what had become the prevailing fashion, but brushed back from her low
forehead, and staidly held in place by a broad, black, snood-like ribbon.

He looked to his right, down the old-fashioned, almost square dining
table. Jack was the least changed, after his father, of the young people
sitting at this table. Jack, nine years ago, had been a rather complacent
boy, doing very well at school, the type of boy who is as if marked out
by fate to do well in life. Yes, Jack had hardly changed at all, but
Radmore, looking at Jack, felt a sudden intolerable jealousy for
George....

He came back with a start to what was going on around him, and idly he
wondered what had happened to all the servants this evening. Truth to
tell he had been just a little surprised and taken aback at not finding
his bag unpacked and his evening clothes laid out before dinner.

Timmy had slipped out of his chair and brought him a plateful of roast
mutton, and now Rosamund was playing waitress, smiling at his elbow, a
lovely Hebe indeed, with dishes of potatoes and greens. He helped himself
a little awkwardly, while Timmy was taking round p