“What on earth put that into your head?”

“Only that it seems funny, if we’re getting richer and richer, and yet all the time farther and farther away from the life that every one agrees is the best for health and happiness.  Father put it into my head, making me look at the little, towny people in Transham this afternoon.  I know I mean to begin at once to learn about farm work.”

“You?” This pretty young thing with the dark head and the pale, slim shoulders!  Farm work!  Women were certainly getting queer.  In his department he had almost daily evidence of that!

“I should have thought art was more in your line!”

Nedda looked up at him; and he was touched by that look, so straight and young.

“It’s this.  I don’t believe Derek will be able to stay in England.  When you feel very strongly about things it must be awfully difficult to.”

In bewilderment John answered: 

“Why!  I should have said this was the country of all others for movements, and social work, and—­and—­cranks—­” he paused.

“Yes; but those are all for curing the skin, and I suppose we’re really dying of heart disease, aren’t we?  Derek feels that, anyway, and, you see, he’s not a bit wise, not even patient—­so I expect he’ll have to go.  I mean to be ready, anyway.”

And Nedda got up.  “Only, if he does something rash, don’t let them hurt him, Uncle John, if you can help it.”

John felt her soft fingers squeezing his almost desperately, as if her emotions had for the moment got out of hand.  And he was moved, though he knew that the squeeze expressed feeling for his nephew, not for himself.  When she slid away out of the big room all friendliness seemed to go out with her, and very soon after he himself slipped away to the smoking-room.  There he was alone, and, lighting a cigar, because he still had on his long-tailed coat which did not go with that pipe he would so much have preferred, he stepped out of the French window into the warm, dark night.  He walked slowly in his evening pumps up a thin path between columbines and peonies, late tulips, forget-me-nots, and pansies peering up in the dark with queer, monkey faces.  He had a love for flowers, rather starved for a long time past, and, strangely, liked to see them, not in the set and orderly masses that should seemingly have gone with his character, but in wilder beds, where one never knew what flower was coming next.  Once or twice he stopped and bent down, ascertaining which kind it was, living its little life down there, then passed on in that mood of stammering thought which besets men of middle age who walk at night—­a mood caught between memory of aspirations spun and over, and vision of aspirations that refuse to take shape.  Why should they, any more—­ what was the use?  And turning down another path he came on something rather taller than himself, that glowed in the darkness as though a great moon, or