His thoughts took, rarely enough for him, a purely personal and sentimental turn.

He thought of the earliest days of his marriage, when he and his wife had wandered about the gardens of his old home in Wiltshire on spring evenings such as these, and had talked sometimes lightly, sometimes seriously, of the future.

Almost as he sat there in the midst of that noisy crowd, he could catch the faint perfume of hyacinths from the borders along which they had passed and the trimly-cut flower-beds which fringed the deep green lawn.

Almost he could hear the chiming of the old stable clock, the clear note of a thrush singing.

A puff of wind brought them a waft of fainter odour from the wild violets which carpeted the woods.