o remain hers only for the rest of his life.
Since, therefore, he could not dispatch Memory, he sought to immure
her. Since Valerie's sovereignty was so fast stablished that it could
not be moved, he sought to rule his heart out of his system. Had it
been possible, he would, like Aesop's Beaver, have ripped the member
from him and gone heartless ever after. The Fabulous Age being dead,
Anthony made the best shift he could, and strove to bury kingdom and
queen together so deep within him that their existence should not
trouble his life. If he could not put out the light, he would hide it
under a bushel. It occurred to him that his mind, appropriately
occupied, should make an excellent bushel--appropriately occupied....
He resolved that Gramarye should have his mind. Of this he would make
a kingdom, mightier and more material than that of his heart. The
trouble was, his mind, though more tractable, liked Valerie's
occupation, found it desirable, and clung to its present tenant for all
it was worth. By no means dismayed, Anthony, as before, had recourse
to ejection by crowding out.... Two things, however, made this attempt
more formidable. First, he did not have to be for ever scouring the
highways and hedges for a new tenantry; Gramarye was always at hand.
Secondly, though Anthony did not know it, _there was no need for
Gramarye to be compelled to come in_. He was pressing an invitation
upon one who had invited herself. The hooded personality of the place
had stolen up to the door: already its pale fingers were lifting the
latch.... Before he had been in the Cotswolds for seven weeks, she had
thrust and been thrust into the doorway.

It was the thin end of the wedge.

Each passing day fell upon the wedge like the stroke of a hammer.
Sometimes they drove it: oftener the wedge stayed still where it was.
But it never slipped back. When it was stubbornest, and the days
seemed to lose their weight, when Valerie's hold seemed indefeasible,
when the woods were quick with memory, when Anthony heard an old faint
sigh in the wind, and the laughter of a brook fluted the note of a soft
familiar voice, then more than once that strange, cool, silvery call
had stolen out of the distance, to melt upon the air as soon as uttered
and leave its echoes at play upon the edge of earshot.... Before the
echoes had died, the wedge would have moved.

For a master at once so tireless and so devotedly served, Colonel
Winchester han