Douglas was not long over his toilet.  When he returned he was inclined to be thoughtful.  For no earthly reason he could think of, Cissy’s friendship with Drexley irritated him.  He did not understand it.  He had looked upon Drexley as a man whose emancipation was an impossibility, for whom there was no hope of any further social life.  Was it possible that he could be seriously attracted by Cicely?  He watched her with this thought all through luncheon, and gradually there crept into his mind a fuller and more complete appreciation of her unmistakable charm.  All the time she was chattering gaily to him, chasing away his gloom, forcing him to breathe the atmosphere of gaiety and light-heartedness which she seemed at once to create and to revel in.  It occurred to him that if ever a girl in the world was created to save a man from despair, surely she was that one.  Dainty, cheerful, unselfish, with a charming command of language and a piquant wit, Cicely had made vast strides in self-development since the days when they had sat together on the Feldwick Hills and talked of that future into which it seemed then so impossible that they should ever pass.

“Do you remember,” he asked her, “what we used to call the pearl light, the soft crystalline glow before the sunrise, and how fresh and sweet the air was when we scrambled up the hill?”

She nodded thoughtfully.

“I think very often of those days, and the dreams we used to weave together.  Sometimes I can scarcely believe how near we have come to realising them.  What a wonderfully still, lonely country it was.”

“We used to sit and watch the smoke curl upwards from the cottages one by one.  The farm was always the first.”

“Yes, Joan saw to that.”

“And the nights.  Do you remember how sweet the perfumes were—­the heather and the wild thyme?  Those long cool nights, Cissy, when we watched the lights flicker out one by one, and the corncrakes and the barn owl came and made music for us.”

“It is like a beautiful picture, the memory,” she murmured.

“Build a fence around and keep it,” he said.  “Life there was an abstraction, but a beautiful one.  London has made man and woman of us, but are we any happier, I wonder?”

“I am,” she answered simply.

“You are happy because you have not grasped at shadows,” he said, bitterly.  “You have taken the good which has come, and been thankful.”

“And you,” she replied, softly, “you are known already.  In a few months’ time you will be famous.”

“Ay, but shall I be happy?” he asked himself, only half aloud.

“If you will,” she answered.  “If you have spent any of your time grasping at shadows, be thankful at least that you are man enough to realise it and put them from you.  Life should be a full thing for you.  Douglas, I think that you are wonderful.  All that we dreamed of for you has come true.”

He looked into her face with a sudden intensity—­a pretty face enough, flushed and earnest.