Very carefully he hid his ignominious frame of mind—­even from his mother; though she probably suspected it and would not fail to understand.  What, precisely, would life be worth without that dear, daily intimacy—­life uncoloured by the rainbow-tinted charm of her gentle, passionate, humorous, delicately-poised personality?  Relations of such rare quality exact their own pitiless price; and the woman influence would always be, for Roy—­as for most men of genuine gifts and high purpose—­his danger point or salvation.  The dim and distant prospect of parting was thinkable—­though perturbing.  But all this talk of steamers and outfits startlingly illumined the fact that in October he was actually going—­to the other end of the earth.

* * * * *

With Dyan’s departure, realisation pounced upon his heart and brain.  Vaguely, and quite unjustly, he felt as if his cousin were in some way to blame; and for the moment, he was not sorry to be rid of him.  Partings over, he went off for a lone prowl—­hatless, as usual—­to quiet his jangling sensations and tell that inner, irresolute Roy not to be a treble-distilled fool....

Nothing like the open moor to clear away cobwebs.  The sweeps of heady colour and blue distances could be trusted to revive the winged impulse that lured him irresistibly away from the tangible and assured.  Is there no hidden link—­he wondered—­between the wander-instinct of the home-loving Scot and the vast spaces of moor and sky that lie about him in his infancy...?

But first he must traverse the enchanted green gloom of his beech-wood, memory-haunted at every turn.  Under his favourite tree, a wooden cross, carved by Tara and himself, marked the grave of Prince, dead these three years of sheer old age.  And at sight of it there sprang to memory that unforgotten day of May,—­the fight with Joe; Tara’s bracelet, still treasured in his letter-case, even as Tara treasured the “broidered bodice,” in a lavender-scented sachet, set apart from mere blouses and scarves....

And again that troublesome voice within urged—­“What an utter fool you are—­running away from them all.”

To him had fallen the privilege of knowing family life at its best—­the finest and happiest on earth; and he could not escape the price exacted, when the call comes to act and decide and suffer alone.  Associations that grow up with us are more or less taken for granted while their roots lie deep in the heart.  Only when the threat of parting disturbs the delicate fibres, their depth and tenacity are revealed.  And so it was with Roy.  Hurrying through his wood of knightly adventures he felt besieged, in spirit, by the many loves that had hitherto simply been a part of his life; yet to-day pressed urgently, individually, upon his consciousness, his heart....

And over against them was the counter-pull of deep ancestral stirrings; large vague forces of the outer world; the sense of ferment everywhere; of storm-clouds on the greater horizon, big with dramas that might rock the spheres....