The little old green-house temple of his early masterpieces was still extant, used now to protect watering pots.  But no vestige of impulse towards work came to him down there.  He was marking time; not restless, not bored, just waiting—­but for what, he had no notion.  And Sylvia, at any rate, was happy, blooming in these old haunts, losing her fairness in the sun; even taking again to a sunbonnet, which made her look extraordinarily young.  The trout that poor old Gordy had so harried were left undisturbed.  No gun was fired; rabbits, pigeons, even the few partridges enjoyed those first days of autumn unmolested.  The bracken and leaves turned very early, so that the park in the hazy September sunlight had an almost golden hue.  A gentle mellowness reigned over all that holiday.  And from Ireland came no further news, save one picture postcard with the words:  “This is our house.—­Nell.”

In the last week of September they went back to London.  And at once there began in him again that restless, unreasonable aching—­that sense of being drawn away out of himself; so that he once more took to walking the Park for hours, over grass already strewn with leaves, always looking—­craving—­and for what?

At Dromore’s the confidential man did not know when his master would be back; he had gone to Scotland with Miss Nell after the St. Leger.  Was Lennan disappointed?  Not so—­relieved, rather.  But his ache was there all the time, feeding on its secrecy and loneliness, unmentionable feeling that it was.  Why had he not realized long ago that youth was over, passion done with, autumn upon him?  How never grasped the fact that ‘Time steals away’?  And, as before, the only refuge was in work.  The sheep—­dogs and ‘The Girl on the Magpie Horse’ were finished.  He began a fantastic ’relief’—­a nymph peering from behind a rock, and a wild-eyed man creeping, through reeds, towards her.  If he could put into the nymph’s face something of this lure of Youth and Life and Love that was dragging at him, into the man’s face the state of his own heart, it might lay that feeling to rest.  Anything to get it out of himself!  And he worked furiously, laboriously, all October, making no great progress. . . .  What could he expect when Life was all the time knocking with that muffled tapping at his door?

It was on the Tuesday, after the close of the last Newmarket meeting, and just getting dusk, when Life opened the door and walked in.  She wore a dark-red dress, a new one, and surely her face—­her figure—­were very different from what he had remembered!  They had quickened and become poignant.  She was no longer a child—­that was at once plain.  Cheeks, mouth, neck, waist—­all seemed fined, shaped; the crinkly, light-brown hair was coiled up now under a velvet cap; only the great grey eyes seemed quite the same.  And at sight of her his heart gave a sort of dive and flight, as if all its vague and wistful sensations had found their goal.