“You look fagged out, old boy.  And the sooner you’re asleep—­the sooner it will be to-morrow!  A pet axiom of yours.  D’you remember?”

Did he not remember?

They went upstairs together; the great house seemed oppressively empty and silent.  On the threshold of Roy’s room they said good-night.  There was an instant of palpable awkwardness; then Roy—­overcoming it—­leaned forward and kissed the patch of white hair on his father’s temple.

“God bless you,” Sir Nevil said rather huskily.  “You ought to sleep sound in there.  Don’t dream.”

“But I love to dream,” said Roy; and his father laughed.

“You’re not so staggeringly changed inside!  As sure as a gun, you’ll be late for breakfast!”

And he did dream.  The moment his lids fell—­she was there with him, under the beeches, their sanctuary—­she who all day had hovered on the confines of his spirit, like a light, felt not seen.  There were no words between them, nor any need of words; only the ineffable peace of understanding, of reunion....

Dream—­or visitation—­who could say?  To him it seemed that only afterwards sleep came—­the dreamless sleep of renewal....

* * * * *

He woke egregiously early:  such an awakening as he had not known for months on end.  And out there in the garden it was a miracle of a morning:  divinely clear, with the mellow clearness of England; massed trees, brooding darkly; the lawn all silver-grey with dew; everywhere blurred outlines and tender shadows; pure balm to eye and spirit after the hard brilliance and contrasts of the East.

Madness to get up; yet impossible to lie there waiting.  He tried it, for what seemed an endless age:  then succumbed to the inevitable.

While he was dressing, clouds drifted across the blue.  A spurt of rain whipped his open casement; threatening him in playful mood.  But before he had crept down and let himself out through one of the drawing-room windows, the sky was clear again, with the tremulous radiance of happiness struck sharp on months of sorrow and stress.

Striding, hatless, across the drenched lawn, and resisting the pull of his beech-wood, he pressed on and up to the open moor; craving its sweeps of space and colour unbosomed to the friendly sky that seemed so much nearer earth than the passionate blue vault of India.

It was five years since he had seen heather in bloom—­or was it five decades?  The sight of it recalled that other July day, when he had tramped the length of the ridge with his head full of dreams and the ache of parting in his heart.

To him, that far-off being seemed almost another Roy in another life.  Only—­as his father had feelingly reminded him—­the first Roy and the last were alike informed by the spirit of one woman; visible then, invisible now; yet sensibly present in every haunt she had made her own.  The house was full of her; the wood was full of her.  But the pangs of reminder he had so dreaded resolved themselves, rather, into a sense of indescribable, ethereal reunion.  He asked nothing better than that his life and work should be fulfilled with her always:  her and Tara—­if she so decreed....