not far distant."

"My dear boy--" said the lawyer.

"Ah, not a word. I don't know--"

Morris pushed his chair back quickly, and stood up--his tall slim figure
outlined against the sober red of the dining-room wall. A plume of black
hair had escaped from his well-brushed head and hung over his forehead,
and his sun-tanned vivid face looked extraordinarily handsome. His
mother's clear-cut energetic features were there, with the glow and
buoyancy of youth kindling them. Violent vitality was his also; his was
the hot blood that could do any deed when the life-instinct commanded it.
He looked like one of those who could give their body to be burned in the
pursuit of an idea, or could as easily steal, or kill, provided only the
deed was vitally done in the heat of his blood. Violence was clearly his
mode of life: the motor had to go sixty miles an hour; he might be one of
those who bathed in the Serpentine in mid-winter; he would clearly dance
all night, and ride all day, and go on till he dropped in the pursuit of
what he cared for. Mr. Taynton, looking at him as he stood smiling there,
in his splendid health and vigour felt all this. He felt, too, that if
Morris intended to be married to-morrow morning, matrimony would probably
take place.

But Morris's pause, after he pushed his chair back and stood up, was only
momentary.

"Good God, yes; I'm in love," he said. "And she probably thinks me a
stupid barbarian, who likes only to drive golfballs and motorcars.
She--oh, it's hopeless. She would have let me come over to see them