She had called with all her delicate friendly skill, on something which only now under that summons he began to miss.

It was like a lost word in every sentence in which the ordinary hopes of men are to be read, and he felt that until he found it again all the help Mrs.Lessing could afford him would not enable him to think of marriage as a thing desirable in itself.

It was missing in him still, when he came that night rather late to the apartment where only the Japanese houseboy awaited him.

One of the first things he had done for Ellen with his increasing means, had been to buy back for her the house at Bloombury with the garden and a bit of the orchard.

She had been there now since Decoration Day, retiring more and more into the kindly village life as a point of vantage from which to mark with pride the social distance that Peter travelled from her.