“Yes. And I will try to bring you back what you want.” “I have no doubts as to that.” She stood for a moment at the gate, watching his broad figure disappear between the green hedgerows of the lane. A part of herself seemed to go with him, an outflowing of something that came from the deeps of her womanhood. “Eve, dear, what a nice man Mr. Canterton is.” “Nice” was the principal adjective in Mrs. Carfax’s vocabulary. “Yes.” “So good looking, and such nice manners. You would never have thought that he——” “Was in trade?” “Not quite that, dear, but selling things for money.” “Of course, he might give them away. I suppose his social position would be greatly improved!” “I don’t think that would be quite feasible, dear. Really, sometimes, you are almost simple.” Canterton was walking through the woods, head bent, his eyes curiously solemn. “What I want! She will bring me back what I want. What is it that I want?” He came suddenly from the shadows of the woods into the full splendour of the evening light upon blue hills and dim green valleys. He stopped dead, eyes at gaze, a spasm of vague emotion rising in his throat. This sun-washed landscape appeared like a mysterious projection of something that lay deep down in his consciousness. What was it he wanted? A vital atmosphere such as this—comradeship, sympathy, passionate understanding. * * * * * CHAPTER XI LATIMER When Eve had left for Latimer, the routine of Canterton’s working day ran with the same purposefulness, like a familiar path in a garden, yet though the scene was the same, the atmosphere seemed different, even as a well-known landscape may be glorified and rendered more mysterious by the light poured out from under the edge of a thunder cloud. A peculiar tenderness, a glamour of sensitiveness, covered everything. He was more alive to the beauty of the world about him, and the blue hills seemed to hang like an enchantment on the edge of the horizon. He felt both strangely boyish and richly mature. Something had been renewed in him. He was an Elizabethan, a man of a wonderful new youth, seeing strange lands rising out of the ocean, his head full of a new splendour of words and a new majesty of emotions. The old self in him seemed as young and fresh as the grass in spring. His vitality was up with the birds at dawn. The first two days were days of dreams. The day’s work was the same, yet it passed with a peculiar pleasureableness as though there were soft music somewhere keeping a slow rhythm. He was conscious of an added wonder, of the immanence of something that had not taken material shape. A richer light played upon the colours of the world about him. He was conscious of the light, but he did not realise its nature, nor whence it came.