But, wherever he went—­down underground in the Boutiques or the Gouliots; or lying on the Eperquerie among the flaming gorse and cloudlike stretches of primroses; or standing on Longue Pointe while the sun sank in unearthly splendours behind Herm and Guernsey; or watching from the windmill the throbbing life-lights all round the wide horizon;—­wherever he was, and whatever he was doing, there with him always was the poignant remembrance of Margaret Brandt and his loss in her.

His heart ached so, at thought of the emptiness and desolation of the years that lay before him, that at times his body ached also, and the spirit within him groaned in sympathy.

Life without Margaret!  What was it worth?

Though it brought him riches and honours overpassing his hopes—­and he doubted now at times if that were possible, lacking the inspiration of Margaret—­what was it worth?

Riches and honours, won at the true sword’s point of earnest work, were good and worth the winning.  But yet, without Margaret, they were as nothing to him.  His whole heart cried aloud for Margaret.  Without her all the full rich hues of life faded into dull gray ashes.

With Margaret to strive for, he had felt himself capable of mighty things.  Without her—!

And that she should throw herself away on a Charles Pixley!—­Charles the smiling, the imperturbable, the fount of irrepressible chatter and everlasting inanities!  How could such a one as Charles Pixley possibly satisfy her nobler nature?  Out of the question!  Impossible!  But then it is just possible that he was not exactly in the best state of mind for forming an unbiassed opinion on so large a question as that.

Anyway he was out of it, and Margaret Brandt was henceforth nothing to him.  If he said it once he said it hundreds of times, as if the simple reiteration of so obvious a truth would make it one whit the truer, when his whole heart was clamouring that Margaret was all the worlds to him and the only thing in the world that he wanted.

With an eye, perhaps, to his obvious lack of cheerfulness, his namesake and host suggested various diversions,—­fishing for congers and rock-fish, a voyage round the island, a trip across to Herm, a day among the rabbits on.  Brecqhou.  But he wanted none of them.  His life was flapping on a broken wing and all he wanted was to be left alone.

In time the wound would heal, and he would take up his work again and find his solace in it.  But wounds such as this are not healed in a day.  It was raw and sore yet, the new skin had not had time to form.

He recalled Lady Elspeth’s dissatisfaction with his love-scenes, and thought, grimly, that now he could at all events enter fully into the feelings of the man who had lost the prize, and would be able to depict them to the life.  If the choice had been left to him he would gladly have dispensed with all such knowledge to its profoundest depths, if only the prize had remained to him.  But the choice had been Margaret’s, and the prize was Charles Pixley’s.