th his own. Its
inertia, when one came to comprehend it, was undeniably magnificent,
and long ago he had perceived within himself the growth of an answering
repose, a responsive lethargy, which in its full development was
also going to be very fine. Practically all the land this side of the
impalpable line where trees and houses began to fade into the background
belonged to him; there were whole villages nestling half-concealed
under its shrubberies which were his property. As an investment, these
possessions were extremely unremunerative. Indeed, if one added the cost
of the improvements which ought to be made, to the expenditure already
laid out in renovations, it was questionable if for the next twenty
years they would not represent a deficit on the income-sheet. But, now
that he had laid hold of the local character, it pleased him that it
should be so. He would not for the world have his gentle, woolly-minded,
unprofitable cottagers transformed into "hustlers"; it would wound
his eye to see the smoke of any commercial chimney, the smudge of
any dividend-paying factory, staining the pure tints of the sylvan
landscape. He had truly learned to love it.

Yet now, as he strolled on the terrace with his first after-luncheon
cigar, he unaccountably yawned at the thing he loved. Upon reflection,
he had gone to bed rather earlier the previous evening than usual.
He had not been drinking out of the ordinary; his liver seemed right
enough. He was not conscious of being either tired or drowsy. He looked
again at the view with some fixity, and said to himself convincingly
that nothing else in England could compare with it. It was the finest
thing there was anywhere. Then he surprised himself in the middle of
another yawn--and halted abruptly. It occurred to him that he wanted to
travel.

Since his home-coming to this splendid new home in the previous January,
at the conclusion of a honeymoon spent in Algiers and Egypt, he had not
been out of England. There had been a considerable sojourn in London, it
is true, at what was described to him as the height of the Season, but
looking back upon it, he could not think of it as a diversion. It had
been a restless, over-worked, mystifying experience, full of dinners
to people whom he had never seen before, and laborious encounters with
other people whom he did not particularly want to see again. There
had been no physical comfort in it for him, and little more mental
satisfaction, for