The professor was smoking under the maples by the front steps when the car drove up.  He looked very cool, very comfortable and very sure of himself—­entirely too sure of himself, in John’s opinion.  John, who at the moment, felt neither cool nor comfortable, and anything but sure, observed him with envy and pity.  Envy for so obvious a content, pity for an ignorance which made content possible.

Spence, on his part, seemed unaware of a certain tenseness in the attitude of both Desire and John, a symptom which might have suggested many things to a reflective mind.

“You look frightfully ‘het up,’ Bones,” he said.  “And your collar is wilting.  Better pause in your mad career and have some tea.”

“Thanks, can’t.  Office hours—­see you later,” jerked the doctor rapidly as he turned his car.

“What have you been doing to John to bring on an attack of ’office hours’ at this time of day?” asked Spence as he and Desire crossed the lawn together.  “Wasn’t the great idea a success?”

“John thinks it was.”

It was so unlike Desire to give someone else’s opinion when asked for her own that the professor said “um.”

“I suppose,” she added stiffly, “it is a question of values.”

“Something for something—­and a doubt as to whether one pays too dear for the whistle?  Well, don’t worry about it.  If you could not help, you probably could not hurt, either. . . .  I had a letter from Li Ho this afternoon.”

“A letter!” Desire’s swift step halted.  Her eyes, wide and startled, questioned him.  “A letter from Li Ho?  But Li Ho can’t write—­in English.”

“Can’t he?  Wait until you’ve read it.  But I shan’t let you read it, if you look like that.”

“Like what?  Frightened?  But I am frightened.  I can’t help it.  I know it’s foolish.  But the more I forget—­the worse it is when I remember.”

“You must get over that.  Sit here while I fetch the letter.  Aunt is out.  I’ll tell Olive to bring tea.”

Desire sat where he placed her.  It was very pleasant there with the green slope of the lawn and the cool shadow of trees.  But her widely opened eyes saw nothing of its homely peace.  They saw, instead, a curving stretch of moonlit beach and a trail which wound upwards into thick darkness.  Ever since she had broken away, that vision had haunted her, now near and menacing, now dimmer and farther off, but always there like a spectre of the past.

“It hasn’t let me go—­it is there always—­waiting,” thought Desire.  And in the still warmth of the garden she shivered.

The sense of Self, which is our proudest possession, receives some curious shocks at times.  Before the mystery of its own strange changing the personality stands appalled.  The world swings round in chaos before the startled question, “Who am I—­where is that other Self that once was I?”