have been more than a formality. Why had it been a mere incident--an
incident scarcely salient among the happenings of a busy day? As he
looked back, Lewis began to see that it was not yesterday or the day
before that he had parted from his father. When was it, then? Suddenly
it came upon him that their real farewell had been said in that still,
deserted lane overlooking his father's land of dreams.

The realization depressed him. He did not know why. He did not know that
the physical partings in this world are as nothing compared with those
divisions of the spirit that come to us unawares, that are never seen in
anticipation, but are known all too poignantly when, missing from beside
us some long familiar soul, we look back and see the parting of the
ways.

Then there was another matter that had come to puzzle his inexperience.
He knew nothing of his father's theory that there is no erotic affection
that can stand a separation of six months in conjunction with six
thousand miles. To youth erotic affection is nonexistent; all emotional
impulse is love. Along this road the race would have come to utter
marital disaster long ago were it not for the fact that youth takes in a
new impulse with every breath.

In certain aspects Lewis had the maturity of his age. People who looked
at him saw a man, not a boy. But there was a shy and hidden side of him
that was very young indeed. He was one of those men in whom youth is
inherent, a legion that cling long to dreams and are ever ready to stand
and fall by some chosen illusion. Reason can not rob them of God, nor
women rob them of woman.

To Lewis's youth had come a new impulse so entangled with contact with
H lne, with Leighton, and with Natalie that he could not quite define
it. He only knew that it had pushed Folly back in his vision--so far
back that his mind could not fasten upon and hold her in the place to
which he had given her a right. The realization troubled him. He worried
over it, but comforted himself with the thought that once his eyes could
feast again upon her living self, she would blot out, as before, all
else in life.

He should have arrived in London on Saturday night, but a heavy fog held
the steamer to the open sea over night, and it was only late on Sunday
morning that he disembarked at Plymouth. Well on in the afternoon he
reached town and rushed to the flat for a wash and a change before
seeking Folly.

Eager to taste the pleasures of surprising t