He was about to utter something in protest, but she turned away abruptly and sped up the stairs.  On the first landing she paused for the briefest instant and looked down.

“Good-by,” she faltered.  “I must go back to papa.  He’ll need me.  I can’t talk any more just now.  I’m too bewildered—­about everything.  Colonel Ashley will arrive in a day or two, and after I’ve seen him I shall be a little clearer as to what I think; and—­and then—­I shall see you again.”

He continued to stand gazing up the stairway long after he had heard her close the door of Guion’s room behind her.

XI

It was not difficult for Davenant to ascribe his lightness of heart, on leaving Tory Hill, to satisfaction in getting rid of his superfluous money, since he had some reason to fear that the possession of it was no great blessing.  To a man with little instinct for luxury and no spending tastes, twenty or thirty thousand dollars a year was an income far outstripping his needs.  It was not, however, in excess of his desires, for he would gladly have set up an establishment and cut a dash if he had known how.  He admired the grand style in living, not so much as a matter of display, because presumably it stood for all sorts of mysterious refinements for which he possessed the yearning without the initiation.  The highest flight he could take by his own unaided efforts was in engaging the best suite of rooms in the best hotel, when he was quite content with his dingy old lodgings; in driving in taxicabs, when the tram-car would have suited him just as well, and ordering champagne, when he would have preferred some commoner beverage.  Fully aware of the insufficiency of this method of reaching a higher standard, he practised it only because it offered the readiest means he could find of straining upward.  He was sure that with a wife who knew the arts of elegance to lead the way his scent for following would be keen enough; but between him and the acquisition of this treasure there lay the memory of the haughty young creature who had, in the metaphor with which he was most familiar, “turned him down.”

But it was not the fact that he had more money than he needed of which he was afraid; it was rather the perception that the possibility of indulging himself—­coupled with what he conceived to be a kind of duty in doing it—­was sapping his vigor.  All through the second year of his holiday he had noticed in himself the tendency of the big, strong-fibered animal to be indolent and overfed.  On the principle laid down by Emerson that every man is as lazy as he dares to be he got into the way of sleeping late, of lounging in the public places of hotels, and smoking too many cigars.  With a little encouragement he could have contracted the incessant cocktail and Scotch-and-soda habits of some of his traveling compatriots.