and the bright indifference of her beauty--all this had long since lost
any meaning for him. For him the pageant passed as the west wind passes
in Samar over the glimmering valley grasses; and he saw it through
sun-dazzled eyes--all this, and the leafless trees beyond against the
sky, and the trees mirrored in a little wintry lake as brown as the
brown of the eyes which were closed to him now forever.

As he stood there, again he seemed to hear the whistle signal, clear,
distant, rippling across the wind-blown grasses where the brown
constabulary lay firing in the sunshine; but the rifle shots were the
crack of whips, and it was only a fat policeman of the traffic squad
whistling to clear the swarming jungle trails of the great metropolis.

Again Selwyn turned to the house, hesitating, unreconciled. Every
sun-lit window stared back at him.

He had not been prepared for so much limestone and marquise magnificence
where there was more renaissance than architecture and more bay-window
than both; but the number was the number of his sister's house; and, as
the street and the avenue corroborated the numbered information, he
mounted the doorstep, rang, and leisurely examined four stiff box-trees
flanking the ornate portal--meagre vegetation compared to what he had
been accustomed to for so many years.

Nobody came; once or twice he fancied he heard sounds proceeding from
inside the house. He rang again and fumbled for his card case. Somebody
was coming.

The moment that the door opened he was aware of a distant and curious
uproar--far away echoes of cheering, and the faint barking of dogs.