It need hardly be noted that Howland Wade had not been the pioneer in question: his had been the wiser part of swelling the chorus when it rose, and gradually drowning the other voices by his own insistent note. He had pitched the note so screamingly, and held it so long, that he was now the accepted authority on Pellerin, not only in the land which had given birth to his genius but in the Europe which had first acclaimed it; and it was the central point of pain in Bernald’s sense of the situation that a man who had so yearned for silence as Pellerin should have his grave piped over by such a voice as Wade’s. Bernald’s talk with the Interpreter had revived this ache to the momentary exclusion of other sensations; and he was still sore with it when, the next afternoon, he arrived at Portchester for his second Sunday with the Wades. At the station he had the surprise of seeing Winterman’s face on the platform, and of hearing from him that Doctor Bob had been called away to assist at an operation in a distant town. “Mrs. Wade wanted to put you off, but I believe the message came too late; so she sent me down to break the news to you,” said Winterman, holding out his hand. Perhaps because they were the first conventional words that Bernald had heard him speak, the young man was struck by the relief his intonation gave them. “She wanted to send a carriage,” Winterman added, “but I told her we’d walk back through the woods.” He looked at Bernald with a sudden kindness that flushed the young man with pleasure. “Are you strong enough? It’s not too far?” “Oh, no. I’m pulling myself together. Getting back to work is the slowest part of the business: not on account of my eyes--I can use them now, though not for reading; but some of the links between things are missing. It’s a kind of broken spectrum ... here, that boy will look after your bag.”