A few faint stars were in the west as Nigel tramped towards it. They seemed to swim up out of the eddies of crimson fog that floated there—they seemed to be showing little candles of hope to the man who turned his back on the east. The castle of the dayspring lay behind him, swallowed in thundery murk, but before him were the lights of a broader palace where dead hopes and dead hatreds keep state together.

The west glowed and trembled and purpled—fiery rays rested on the woods, and reached over the sky to the moon. Then against the purple showed a tall chimney, rising from a high-roofed cottage that squatted in the fields of Wilderwick.

As Nigel walked down the hill towards Sparrow Hall, a great quickening realisation struck his exhausted heart. He knew that his dream was not dead. Tony, the light in which he had seen it, was gone for ever, but the dream itself was still there in the dark. For six months he had tried to lead a good and honourable life, and now, though the motive was gone, the old desire remained as strong and white as ever. He could never be as he had been before he met Tony. He knew now that it was not she that had called him—she had merely opened his ears to a voice that had been calling him all through his life, through struggle, lust and pain, failure and hate—and was calling[Pg 301] him still, through the utter darkness. The child in him, which had desperately sought congenial comradeship in a little girl, rose out of the wreck, and heard as in a dream the voices of boys and girls in London, laughing, fooling and ragging together, calling to all in him that was gay and young and outrageous. He wanted to go back to London, he wanted to play and to work, and to win for himself what he had once yearned to win for Tony. His music, that one touch of the poetic and supernatural in his sordid, materialistic life, would raise him up in this his Last Day, and give him his heart\'s desire—his desire for a clean life and an honourable name.

He stood for a moment in the great lonely field—the last of the sun and the first of the moon upon him, around him the dawning eternity of the stars. Two hours ago he had been festering, sick, with his schemes, the comrade of a hundred repulsive ideas. Now he was alone—utterly alone with his one great ambition, stripped of the last rag of personal motive that had clung to it—his ambition to be honest and pure and true.

Tony had pointed him out the way, and directly he had taken it, she had gone—to show it to another man, and walk in it with him. Nigel suddenly pictured that man. He was at Redpale Farm ... he kneeled in the dust at Tony\'s feet ... her hands were upon his head. In her he found redemption, love and blessing—and dared he, Furlonger, grudge redemption, love and blessing to any man? He did not grudge them—let Quentin Lowe take them, walk in white with Tony,[Pg 302] and be worthy of her. Furlonger, too, would walk in white and be worthy—but he would walk alone.

No, not quite alone. He trod softly up the path to Sparrow Hall, between the ranks of the folded flowers. The evening primroses and night-scented stock sent their fragrance in with him at the door. The house was in darkness, and he groped his way to the kitchen, where he found Janey.

She was half asleep in the armchair by the fire—she had laid the supper, that dreary little supper for two, and now lay huddled by the dying embers, cold, in spite of the thick heat of the night.

"Janey," whispered Nigel, as he kissed her.

She started.

"Oh, you\'re back at last!—what a time you\'ve been!"

"I\'m sorry, dear. Come now, I\'ll light the lamp, and we\'ll have supper."

She rose listlessly, and sat down opposite him.

"It\'s a rotten supper—I don\'t cook so well as Novice Unity Agnes."

"Nonsense! you cook quite well enough for me. Janey—will you come and cook for me in London?"

"In London?"—she stared at him blankly.

"Yes, I must go back to my work—and I can\'t leave you here."

"But—but—I don\'t understand—and what shall we do about the farm?"

"We can sell it, and the money will keep us—just the two of us in a workman\'s flat—till my training is over, and I\'m earning money on my[Pg 303] own. Oh, Janey, I don\'t suppose I\'ll ever be rich or famous or that I\'ll fill the Albert Hall—but I—I shall be more worthy of you, dear."

"Of me!"—she laughed.

"Yes. Don\'t you understand? I\'ve got my dream back again—but there\'s an empty place in it.... Will you fill it, Janey?"

She looked questioningly at him with her great haggard eyes.

"Who left it empty?"

"Tony Strife," he said in ............