If, in what now seemed that long-ago past, he had not been a sturdy, normal little lad surrounded by love and friendliness, with his days full of healthy play and pleasure, the child tragedy of their being torn apart might have left ugly marks upon his mind, and lurked there, a morbid memory.

And though, in time, rebellion and suffering had died away, he had never really forgotten.

Even to the cricket-playing, larking boy at Eton there had now and then returned, with queer suddenness, recollections which gave him odd moments of resurrected misery.

They passed away, but at long intervals they came back and always with absolute reality.

At Oxford the intervals had been longer but a certain picture was one whose haunting never lost its clearness.
It was a vision of a colour-warm child kneeling on the grass, her eyes uplifted, expressing only a lonely patience, and he could actually hear her humble little voice as she said: "I--I haven't anything." And it always roused him to rage.
Then there was the piteous break in her voice when she hid her eyes with her arm and said of her beast of a mother: "She--doesn't _like_ me!" "Damn! Damn!" he used to say every time the thing came back.