“It’s better not to mention it before your mother,” Mr. Culpeper was saying huskily, while Stephen wondered.  “She’s the kindest heart in the world.  There isn’t a better woman on earth; but she’d always think the money ought to go to one of the married children.  She couldn’t understand that it’s good business to keep up the property.  Women have queer ideas about business.”

“Well, you’re a brick, Father!” exclaimed the young man, and he meant it from his heart.  His voice trembled, and he put his hand on his father’s arm for a minute as he used to do when he was a child.  Words wouldn’t come to him; but he was deeply touched, and it seemed to him that the barrier which had divided him from his family had suddenly fallen.  Never since his return from France had he felt so near to his father as he felt at that moment.

“Well, well, I thought you’d like to know,” rejoined Mr. Culpeper, and his voice also shook a little.  “I must be getting down town now.  May I take you in my car?”

“No, I rather like the walk, sir.  It does me good.”  Then, without a word more, but with a smile of sympathy and understanding, they parted, and Stephen went out of the house and descended the steps to the street.

It was true, as his mother had observed, that he was happier to-day than he had been for weeks; but this happiness was founded upon what Mrs. Culpeper would have regarded as the most reprehensible of deceptions.  He was happier simply because, in spite of everything he had done to prevent it, Fate had decreed that he was soon to see Patty again.  The longing of the past few weeks was to be appeased, if only for an hour, and he was to see her again!  He did not look beyond the coming night.  He did not attempt to analyse either his motive or his emotions.  The future was still obscure; life was still evolving its inscrutable problem; but it was enough for him, at the moment, to know that he should see her again.  And this certainty, coming after the hungry pain of the last three weeks, brought a glow to his eyes and that haunting smile, like the smile of memory, to his lips.

The light that Corinna had kindled illumined not a political career, but the small vivid image of Patty.  Wherever he looked he saw her flitting ahead of him, a figure painted on sunlight.  He had never found her so desirable as in those few days since he had irrevocably given her up.  His self-denial, his vain endeavours to avoid her and forget her, seemed merely to have poured themselves into the deep rebellious longing of his heart.  He lived always now in that hidden country of the mind, where the winds blew free and strong and the sun never set on the endless roads and the far horizon.