Although long association and familiarity had made such scenes a piece with Lee Randon's subconsciousness, today the hunt seemed nothing more than nonsense. He laughed, and made a remark of disparaging humor; but he found no support. Willing Spencer, kept out of the field by a broken collar bone, gazed at him with lifted eyebrows. Fanny and Lee turned to their horses, held for them by a groom at a mounting block, and went home. The rain had increased, but, not cold, Lee found it pleasant on his face. They jogged quietly over the roads bordered with gaunt sombre hedges, through the open countryside, into Eastlake. Nothing, he realized, had been accomplished with Peyton Morris; the other was too numbed, shocked, by the incredible accident that had overtaken him to listen to reason. Lee felt that he could hardly have said more. He wondered what Claire had to show him. Still, he wasn't through with her husband; he had no intention of resting until every hope was exhausted. What particularly impressed him--he must speak of it to Peyton--was that no matter where Morris might get he would find life monotonously the same. It was very much like mountain climbing--every peak looked different, more iridescent and desirable, from the one occupied; but, gazing back, that just left appeared as engaging, as rare, as any in the distance. Every experience in the life surrounding him was the same as all the others; no real change was offered, because the same dull response permeated all living; no escape such as Peyton planned was possible. Escape, Lee Randon continued, happened within; it was not, he repeated, a place on earth, or any possession, but a freedom, a state, of mind. Peyton Morris, while it was quite possible for him to be destroyed, was incapable of mental liberty, readjustments; he might drive himself on the rocks, on the first reef where he disregarded the clamor of warning bells and carefully charted directions, but he was no Columbus for the discovery of a magical island, a Cuba, of spices and delectable palms. Peyton had looked with a stolid indifference at the dangerously fascinating, the incomprehensible, smile of Cytherea. Yes, if the young donkey could be forced past this tempting patch of grazing, if he could only be driven a short distance farther down the highway of custom, Claire would be safe.