“You are an infernal prig, Val!”

“Oh,” said Val, this time without irony, “It’s easy for you to come with an apology in one hand and a cheque in the other.”

He turned away and stood looking out into the garden.  In the lilac bushes over the lawn Isabel’s robin was still singing his winter carol, and the atmosphere was saturated with the smell of wet, dead leaves, the poignant, fatal smell of autumn.  “There’s winter in the air tonight,” said Val half aloud.

“What?” said Lawrence startled.

“I say that life’s too short for quarrelling.”  He held out his hand.  “But be gentle with her, she is very young.—­ Yes, what is it, Fanny?”

“Major Clowes’s compliments, sir, and he would be glad to see Captain Hyde as soon as convenient.”

At Wanhope half an hour later the sun had gone down behind a bank of purple fog, and cloud after cloud had put off its vermilion glow and faded into a vague dimness of twilight:  house and garden were quiet, except for the silver rippling of the river which went on and on, ceaselessly fleeting over shallows or washing along through faded sedge.  These river murmurs haunted Wanhope all day and night, and so did the low river-mists:  in autumn by six o’clock the grass was already ankle deep and white as a field of lilies.

The tall doors were wide open now:  no lamps were lit, but a big log fire blazed on the hearth, and through the empurpled evening air the house streamed with flame-light, flinging a ruddy glow over leafless acacia and misty turf.  Stretched on his couch in a warm and dark angle by the staircase, Clowes was busy with his collection, examining and sorting a number of small objects which were laid out on his tray:  sparks of light winked between his fingers as iron or gold or steel turned up a reflecting edge.  His face as white as his hands, the wide eyes blackened by the expansion of their pupils, he looked like a ghost, but a ghost of normal habits, washed and shaved and dressed in ordinary tweeds.

“Hullo, Bernard.”

“Good evening, Lawrence.  Oh, you’ve brought Val and—­ Selincourt, is it?  What years since we’ve met, Selincourt!  Very good of you to come down, and I’m delighted to see you, one can’t have too many witnesses.  Mild evening, isn’t it?  Leave the doors open, Val, Barry has made up an immense fire, big enough for January.  Now sit down all of you, will you?  I shan’t keep you long.”

Propped high on cushions, he lay like a statue, his huge shoulders squared against them as boldly as if he were in the saddle.  Lawrence, so like him in frame and colouring, stood with his back to the hearth:  Selincourt with his tired eyes and grey hair sat near the door, one hand slipped between his crossed knees:  Val preferred to stay in the background, a spectator, interested and deeply sympathetic, but a trifle shadowy.  They were three to one, but the dominant personality was that of the cripple.