“It didn’t touch his honor, of course,” replied the major. “We could all agree on that. He was within his rights. But it wasn’t like a Valiant.” They were at the parting now and the major held out his hand. “Oh, well,” he said, “it’s long enough ago, and there’s nothing against his son. I like the young chap, Southall. He’s his father all over again, eh?” “When I first saw him,” said the doctor huskily, “I thought I had slid back thirty years and that our old Beauty Valiant was lying there before me. I loved him, Bristow, and somehow—whatever happened that day at the Hemlocks—it couldn’t make a damned bit of difference to me!” [Pg 223] CHAPTER XXVI THE CALL OF THE ROSES In the great hall at Damory Court the candles in their brass wall-sconces blinked back from the polished parquetry and the shining fire-dogs, filling the rather solemn gloom with an air of warmth and creature-comfort. Leaning against the newel-post, Valiant gazed about him. How different it all looked from the night of his coming! It occurred to him with a kind of wonder that a fortnight ago he had never known this house existed. Then he had conceived the old hectic life the only one worth knowing, the be-all and end-all of modern felicity. It was as if a single stroke had cut his life in two parts which had instantly recoiled as far asunder as the poles. Strangely, the new seemed more familiar than the old; there had been moments when he remembered the past almost as in the placid day one recalls a thriving dream of the night before, which, itself unreal, has left an overpowering impression behind it. Little fragments of the old nightly mosaic—the bitt-music across the dulled glisten of pounded asphalt, [Pg 224]the featherbone girl flaring high in air in electric rain, a pointed clock-tower spiking the upper night-gloom, the faint halitus of musk from a downy theater-wrap—fluttered about him. But all seemed far away, hackneyed, shop-worn, as banal as the scenery of an opera. He began to walk up and down the floor, teasing pricks of restlessness urging him. He opened the door and passed into the unlighted dining-room. On the sideboard sat a silver loving-cup that had arrived the day before in a huge box with his books and knick-knacks. He had won it at polo. He lifted it, fingering its carved handles. He remembered that when that particular score had been made, Katharine Fargo had sat in one of the drags at the side-line. But the memory evoked no thrill. Instead, the thought of her palely-cold, passionless beauty called up another mobile thoroughbred face instinct with quick flashings of mirth and hauteur. Again he felt the fierce clutch of small fingers, as they fought with his in that struggle for his life. Each line of that face stood before him—the arching brows, the cameo-delicacy of profile, the magnolia skin and hair like a brown-gold cloud across the sun.