feeling greater certainty on the point. Even the well-beloved, however,
can select the wrong moment for return. If Cicely Yeovil's heart was
like a singing-bird, it was of a kind that has frequent lapses into
silence.




CHAPTER II: THE HOMECOMING


Murrey Yeovil got out of the boat-train at Victoria Station, and stood
waiting, in an attitude something between listlessness and impatience,
while a porter dragged his light travelling kit out of the railway
carriage and went in search of his heavier baggage with a hand-truck.
Yeovil was a grey-faced young man, with restless eyes, and a rather
wistful mouth, and an air of lassitude that was evidently only a
temporary characteristic. The hot dusty station, with its blended crowds
of dawdling and scurrying people, its little streams of suburban
passengers pouring out every now and then from this or that platform,
like ants swarming across a garden path, made a wearisome climax to what
had been a rather wearisome journey. Yeovil glanced quickly, almost
furtively, around him in all directions, with the air of a man who is
constrained by morbid curiosity to look for things that he would rather
not see. The announcements placed in German alternatively with English
over the booking office, left-luggage office, refreshment buffets, and so
forth, the crowned eagle and monogram displayed on the post boxes, caught
his eye in quick succession.

He turned to help the porter to shepherd his belongings on to the truck,