Nigel reached home only half-an-hour before supper-time. Len and Janey did not receive him cordially, but he was too much preoccupied with his adventure to notice their coldness or take their hints. He poured it all out at the evening meal—the subtle sense of outrage which for some unknown reason von Gleichroeder\'s offer had stirred up, contending in his voice with a ridiculous, childish pride.

Len and Janey were unfeignedly surprised. It had never occurred to them that Nigel\'s playing was even tolerable—they had sometimes liked it in the distance, that was all.

"Fancy his wanting you to go and study in London," said Janey. "I\'m glad you refused."

"So\'m I"!

"It would have been beastly losing you again, old man—we haven\'t had you back three months."

"Wouldn\'t you like to see me fill the Albert Hall?"

"Well—er—if you could really do it, it might be interesting to watch—just for once in a way. But I don\'t see that it would be worth breaking up the \'appy \'ome, only for that."

Nigel would have liked them to be more impressed, but they voiced his own feelings exactly.

"No—nor do I. Well, I\'ve settled the old[Pg 162] geyser, anyway—and now let\'s forget all about him."

Which they did at once.

That night Nigel had restless dreams. He dreamed he was playing to crowded audiences in great nightmare-like halls that stretched away to infinity. The circumstances were always unfavourable—sometimes he would have only one string on his violin, and sometimes he would find himself struggling with some horrible dream-begotten instrument with as many strings as a harp. Once he dreamed that all the audience got up and danced a hideous rigadoon, another time they all had the same face—a dark, florid face that leered.

Towards morning he dreamed a quieter dream. He was playing in a very large place, but he had a rational instrument, and he was playing "I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls." The melody floated all through his dreams—the same as in waking hours, and yet not quite the same—celestial, rarefied, wistful in heart and ears. He was also conscious of a presence—he knew he was near Tony Strife; he felt her close to him, and it was magic in his blood. The melody drifted on—sometimes pouring out of his violin, sometimes seeming to come from very far away.
"And I also dreamed, which pleased me most,
That you loved me still the same ..."

The music ceased abruptly, and he dropped his bow, looking round to see Tony. She was not there; the great hall was empty—nothing but[Pg 163] empty seats stretching away into dimness—except that in the front row of all sat two figures huddled together. He looked down at them, and at first he did not know them, then he saw that they were Len and Janey, staring up at him with hungry, loving eyes....

He woke and sat up, shivering a little. It must be late, for the winter sky was white beyond the woods. Yet he did not feel inclined to rise. He lay back, and folded his hands behind his head, staring out at the dull line of brown that lay against the quivering, dawn-filled clouds.

Those woods always put strange thoughts into his head. They made him think of his own life, lonely, windy and sere. But some day the spring would throb in them, their branches would shine with green, their thickets would thrill with song; in their waste, desolate places primroses would push through the dead leaves of last year.... He sat up again with a jerk—for the first time he realised that the woods would not be always brown.

The thought gave him a faint shock of surprise. Ever since the day he left prison he had looked out on brown woods, rocked by autumn and winter winds, so that he had almost forgotten that autumn and winter would not last for ever. He had never thought of spring, of March and tender green, of April and first flowers, of sweet, quickening rains, and winds full of warmth and the scent of young leaves. It was strange that he should have forgotten spring.

Now in the darkest day of the year, spring held out its promise to the woods—and to him. The[Pg 164] yellow of a hidden sunrise was filling the clouds like hope unbounded—and Nigel\'s dream came back to him, his dream of marble halls and of love that was "still the same." He saw himself playing to thronged audiences, with Tony close to him, unseen, intangible, but there—with all the sweet memories of Lingfield and Brambletye revived and re-established, her friendship, candour, and tenderness "still the same."

Then he understood. Gulfs unbridgeable might lie between the convict with his stained and broken life and the simple little schoolgirl of Shovelstrode. But the well-known violinist who played for "big salaries," who "filled the Albert Hall."... A terrible thing had happened to Nigel—he had begun to hope. When hope has been a long time away, the return of it is like the return of sensation to a frost-bitten limb. It pricks, it burns, it tortures. It tortured Nigel till a cry of anguish burst from him, bitterer than in any of his fits of despair. He bent forward, clapping his hand to his side.

Hope showed him the doors of his prison flung wide at last. For long years he had never dreamed of escape, he was a captive, so fast in prison that he could not get forth—free only among the dead. But now the doors were open and he could go out. His music would raise him up out of the pit, bring him back to an earth washed in rain and spring, to touch the trembling innocence of the lilies, and drink the sweetness of the eternal May.

"Oh, God! Oh, God!—I want to be free! I want to be free!"

[Pg 165]

The cry was not a prayer so much as the cry of his great hunger, finding voice at last—"I want to be free! I want to be free!"

His mind dropped hastily to practical details. He had seen von Gleichroeder\'s address on his card, and that tough memory of his, which was sometimes a curse to him, held it fast. He would write and tell him he had changed his mind. It would be humiliating, but it must be done. Then he would go to London, and work—and work. It was not only the topmost pinnacle that could lift him out of his old life, the name he would make for himself need not be a great name—as long as it was a fair name. That was what he wanted, and would struggle for—a fair name. Hard work, an honest livelihood, self-denial, constant communion with the beautiful and inspired, would purge his soul of its defilement. The hideous stain of his crime would be wiped off. When he had lived for years in poverty and honesty, when he had brought by his music a little sunshine into poor lives like those he had smitten, when the fields of three counties had ceased to reproach him for his treachery, and the name of Furlonger had some faint lustre from his bearing it—then he would be free. And when he was free he would allow himself—not to claim Tony\'s friendship or anything else beyond him, but just to think of her—think of her with hope.

Oh, Tony, little Tony! his little love!

For weeks now he had known that he loved her. Though he had never dared think of her as a woman, he wanted her. He had wanted[Pg 166] women before, he had had his adventures with them—though not perhaps as many as the average man—but they had all been stale and ordinary, the stock line, the job lot, which eager, extravagant youth pays high for as a novelty. Now he had something new. He loved a little girl, scarcely more than a child, parted from him by a dozen barriers of his own erecting. He loved her because she was good and innocent, and had given him perfect comradeship; most of all he loved her because of the barriers between them, because she lived utterly apart from him, in a foreign land of liberty and hope and uprightness, towards which he must strive hourly if he were to gain even the frontiers.

He scowled a little. He was not blind, and he knew that he would have to go into slavery, perhaps for a long time, before this new freedom was won. Even in an hour he had been able to see that von Gleichroeder was a technique-fiend, and would make matters hot for his clumsy pupil. He also realized that though the German had borne good humouredly with his insolence, he would not be so patient when he became his master. Yes—he would have a master—he would have to practise scales and exercises—he would be reprimanded, lectured, ordered about. Herr von Gleichroeder wo............