I had been sorry for him that morning, but I was still sorrier for him then. Banks was suffering righteously and might find relief in that knowledge, but this man was reaping the just penalties of his own acts. XV REMEMBRANCE I do not believe that any of them saw me leave the room. As soon as old Jervaise had gone, all of them had turned with an instinct of protection towards the head of the family. He, alone, had been sacrificed. Within an hour his whole life had been changed, and I began to doubt, as Anne had doubted, whether so old a tree would bear transplanting. Whatever tenderness and care could do, would be done for him, but the threat of uprooting had come so suddenly. In any case, I could not help those gentle foresters whose work it would be to conduct the critical operation; and I walked out of the room without offering any perfunctory excuse for leaving them. I made my way into the garden by the side door through which I had first entered the Home Farm; and after one indeterminate moment, came to a halt at the gate on the slope of the hill. I did not want to go too far from the house. For the time being I was no more to the Banks than an inconvenient visitor, but I hoped that presently some of them--I put it that way to myself--would miss me, and that Arthur or Anne would come and tell me what had been arranged in my absence. I should have been glad to talk over the affair with Arthur, but I hoped that it would not be Arthur who would come to find me. For a time my thoughts flickered capriciously over the astonishing events of my adventurous week-end. I was pleasantly replete with experience. In all my life I had never before entered thus completely into any of the great movements of life. I recalled my first thrills of anticipation amidst the glowing, excited youth of the resting dancers at the Hall. We had been impatient for further expression. The dragging departure of the Sturtons had been an unbearable check upon the exuberance of our desires. In my thought of the scene I could see the unspent spirit of our vitality streaming up in a fierce fount of energy. And with me, at least, that fount, unexpectedly penned by the first hints of disaster, had still played furiously in my mind as I had walked with Frank Jervaise through the wood. My intoxicated imagination had created its own setting. I had gone, exalted, to meet my wonderful fate. Through some strange scene of my own making I had strayed to the very feet of enduring romance. But after that exciting prelude, when the moon had set and slow dawn, like a lifting curtain, had been drawn to reveal the landscape of a world outside the little chamber of my own being, I had been cast from my heights of exaltation into a gloomy pit of disgrace. Fate, with a fastidious particularity, had hauled me back to the things of everyday. I was not to be allowed to dream too long. I was wanted to play my part in this sudden tragedy of experience.