“You will,” he said between his teeth, and with a great effort of will he took her in his arms. But afterwards she went away, and she never came back. V We were silent for a long time after Hugh had spoken of the way Lamoir had left him. And then he said: “Of course she was right. I did understand, later on. That is why I have made no attempt to see her these last nine years. Love, you see, has many masks. We slip on one or other of them, and we say, ‘This is love,’ but really it’s only a fraction of love. And a fraction of love can be the negation of love. Love is enormous and difficult. We must learn how to love, as we must learn how to play music. I did not know how. But I shall see Lamoir soon. I am going to Algeria next week. I have been wanting to go for a long time, but I must just wait another few days....” “But, Hugh, why do you wait even one day?” I protested. “Lamoir is longing to see you, I know she is.” “Yes. But I must wait four or five days or so. For a sort of anniversary. My idea, if you won’t laugh at me too much, is to see Playmate Place again, and then that will give me a clue as to how to deal with Lamoir when I see her in the flesh. I’m sure it will give me a clue. And I’m sure I shall see it again, in three or four days from to-day. I’d like to, immensely. Of course it won’t have changed one bit, but I wonder if Lamoir and I will have grown up. If we have, it will be rather a feat to climb that tree, won’t it? Or maybe the tree will have grown too, though it seemed huge enough at the time. You see, the thing seems to go in cycles of twenty years, more or less. I saw the garden for the first time on a June day in my ninth year. I met Lamoir for the first time on a June day, perhaps the same one, in my twenty-ninth year. And now I’m forty-nine, and the day falls in three or four or five days’ time. Either, I’m quite sure, I see that garden again on that day, or I see Lamoir herself, or....” “Or?” I said. “Or what?” “Well, God knows!” Hugh smiled, pulling at that stiff grey thing on his upper lip, and on the dawn of the fourth day from that night Hugh was found by one of the keepers of Hyde Park lying at the foot of a great tree near the Albert Gate, dead of a broken neck. At the inquest there was read out a letter from his wife’s lawyers, which had been delivered at Hugh’s house on the morning of his death and which he couldn’t, therefore, have read, saying that they had heard by wire from Algeria that his wife had died of heart-failure the day before. X: THE GHOUL OF GOLDERS GREEN I