“It has to be done.  I believe I can carry her through with it if I can carry myself.  She’s a finer thing than I am....  On the whole I am glad it’s only one more day.  Belinda will be about....  Afterwards we can write to each other....  If we can get over the next day it will be all right.  Then we can write about fuel and politics—­and there won’t be her voice and her presence.  We shall really sublimate....  First class idea—­sublimate!....  And I will go back to dear old Martin who’s all alone there and miserable; I’ll be kind to her and play my part and tell her her Carbuncle scar rather becomes her....  And in a little while I shall be altogether in love with her again.

“Queer what a brute I’ve always been to Martin.”

“Queer that Martin can come in a dream to me and take the upper hand with me.

“Queer that now—­I love Martin.”

He thought still more profoundly.  “By the time the Committee meets again I shall have been tremendously refreshed.”

He repeated:—­“Put things on the Higher Plane and keep them there.  Then go back to Martin.  And so to the work.  That’s it....”

Nothing so pacifies the mind as a clear-cut purpose.  Sir Richmond fell asleep during the fourth recapitulation of this programme.

Section 3

When Miss Grammont appeared at breakfast Sir Richmond saw at once that she too had had a restless night.  When she came into the little long breakfast room of the inn with its brown screens and its neat white tables it seemed to him that the Miss Grammont of his nocturnal speculations, the beautiful young lady who had to be protected and managed and loved unselfishly, vanished like some exorcised intruder.  Instead was this real dear young woman, who had been completely forgotten during the reign of her simulacrum and who now returned completely remembered, familiar, friendly, intimate.  She touched his hand for a moment, she met his eyes with the shadow of a smile in her own.

“Oranges!” said Belinda from the table by the window.  “Beautiful oranges.”

She had been preparing them, poor Trans-atlantic exile, after the fashion in which grape fruits are prepared upon liners and in the civilized world of the west.  “He’s getting us tea spoons,” said Belinda, as they sat down.

“This is realler England than ever,” she said.  “I’ve been up an hour.  I found a little path down to the river bank.  It’s the greenest morning world and full of wild flowers.  Look at these.”

“That’s lady’s smock,” said Sir Richmond.  “It’s not really a flower; it’s a quotation from Shakespeare.”

“And there are cowslips!”

“Cuckoo buds of Yellow Hue.  Do paint the meadows with delight.  All the English flowers come out of Shakespeare.  I don’t know what we did before his time.”

The waiter arrived with the tea spoons for the oranges.