back and pick it up, you're done."

Not in Africa had his father stopped to take on a side-tracked car, but
on a day that was already months ago when, standing in a still, deserted
lane, he turned to face forever that moment of his life that had nearest
touched divinity.

Lewis sat pondering for hours. It was not grief he was feeling so much
as an immeasurable loss. One grieves at death when it seems futile, when
it robs youth or racks old age, when it devastates hopes or wrecks a
vision. But death had not come so to his father. It had come as a
fulfilment. Lewis knew instinctively that thus and thus only would his
father have wished to strike into the royal road.

But the loss seized upon his heart and made it ache. He thought
despondently, as which one of us has not, face to face with the fact of
death, of things undone and of words unsaid. How cruel seemed their last
hurried farewell, how hard that his father could not have known that his
sacrifice had told for his boy's liberty, that his wisdom had rightly
seen the path his art must follow to its land of promise! "Hard for
you--only for you," whispered the voice of his new-found maturity.

It was natural that with reaction should come to Lewis a desire to talk,
to seek comfort and sympathy, and it was natural that he should turn to
H lne. He walked slowly to her house. The doorman turned from him to
pick up a note from the hall table. He handed it to Lewis.

"Her ladyship is not in, sir, to-day. Her ladyship told me to give you
the note when you called."

Lewis took the note and walked out. He opened it absently and read:

Lew darling, I have heard. They will tell you that I am out. I'm not
out, but I am broken. I cannot let you see me. Dear, I have given
you all that I had to give.

He stood stock-still and read the words again, then he raised his eyes
and looked slowly about him. Street, faces, trees, walls, and towers
faded from his view. He stood in the midst of an illimitable void. A
terror of loneliness fell upon him. He felt as though his full heart
must speak or break, but in all his present world there was no ear to
hear. Suddenly the impulse of a lifetime, often felt, seldom answered,
came to him with an insistence that would not be denied. Go to Natalie.
Tell Natalie.

CHAPTER LIII

Spring was in the very act of birth when Lewis found himself once more
in the old carryall threading the River Road. This time he sat bes