Breakfast over, he lit a cigarette and watched her clear away, viewing through the smoke the memories of his childhood. Just so, in that very wooden arm-chair, though in another kitchen, used his father to sit, pipe in mouth, while the women did the household work. It was all so familiar, yet so far away. Between then and now stretched a lifetime—so it seemed—of wide and romantic happenings. There, before him, on the wall hung, as it did years ago, the haunting coloured print, cut from some Christmas Number, of young Amyas Leigh listening to Salvation Yeo. As a child, Salvation Yeo’s long arm and finger pointing out to sea had been his inspiration. He had followed it, and gone to distant lands and gone through the promised adventures, and had returned to the picture, wondering whether all that had been was real and not the figment of a dream. A little later, after the doctor’s visit, he was admitted to his mother’s room. For an hour or so he sat with her and gave a human being deep happiness. In the afternoon she lost consciousness. For a day or two she lingered on, and then she died. During the dreary interval between his interview and the funeral, Alexis Triona sat for many hours in his father’s chair, for the North was smitten with a dismal spell of rain and tempest which discouraged rambling out of doors, reconstructing his life, unweaving fact from fiction, tearing aside the veils of self-deception wherein he had enwrapped his soul. Surely there was some basis of fact in the romantic history of Alexis Triona with which for the past year he had identified himself. Surely a man could not dwell so intensely in an imaginary life if none of it were real. Even while tearing open veils and viewing his soul’s nakedness, he sought justification.