Chayne had turned a deaf ear to that plea, but it made its appeal to him to-night.  Wherever his eyes rested, he recaptured something of his boyhood; the country-side was alive with memories.  He looked south, and remembered how the perished cities of history had acquired reality for him by taking on the aspect of Chichester lying low there on the flats; and how the spires of the fabled towns of his storybooks had caught the light of the setting sun, just as did now the towers of the cathedral.  Eastward, in the dip between the shoulder of the downs, and the trees of Arundel Park, a long black hedge stood out with a remarkable definition against the sky—­the hedge of which he had spoken to Sylvia—­the great dark wall of brambles guarding the precincts of the Sleeping Beauty.  He recalled the adventurous day when he had first ridden alone upon his pony along the great back of the downs and had come down to it through a sylvan country of silence and ferns and open spaces; and had discovered it to be no more than a hedge waist-high.  The dusk came upon him as he loitered in that solitary garden; the lights shone out in cottage and farm-house; and more closely still his memories crowded about him weaving spells.  Some one to share them with!  Chayne had no need to wait for old age before he learnt the wisdom of Michel Revailloud.  For his heart leaped now, as he dreamed of exploring once more with Sylvia at his side the enchanted country of his boyhood; gallops in the quiet summer mornings along that still visible track across the downs, by which the Roman legions had marched in the old days from London straight as a die to Chichester; winter days with the hounds; a rush on windy afternoons in a sloop-rigged boat down the Arun to Littlehampton.  Chayne’s heart leaped with a passionate longing as he dreamed, and sank as he turned again to the blank windows of the empty house.

He dined alone, and while he dined evoked Sylvia’s presence at the table, setting her, not at the far end, but at the side and close, so that a hand might now and then touch hers; calling up into her face her slow hesitating smile; seeing her still gray eyes grow tender; in a word watching the Madonna change into the woman.  He went into the library where, since the night had grown chilly, a fire was lit.  It was a place of comfort, with high bookshelves, deep-cushioned chairs, and dark curtains.  But, no less than the dining-room it needed another presence, and lacking that lacked everything.  It needed the girl with the tired and terror-haunted face.  Here, surely the fear would die out of her soul, the eyes would lose their shadows, the feet regain the lightness of their step.

Chayne took down his favorite books, but they failed him.  Between the pages and his eyes one face would shape itself.  He looked into the fire and sought as of old to picture in the flames some mountain on which his hopes were set and to discover the right line for its ascent.  But even that pastime brought no solace for his discontent.  The house oppressed him.  It was empty, it was silent.  He drew aside the curtains and looking down into the valley through the clear night air watched the lights in cottage and farm with the envy born of his loneliness.