Bexhill-on-Sea, _1st February, 1920._




"Man comes into life to seek and find his sufficient beauty, to
serve it, to win and increase it, to fight for it; to face anything
and dare anything for it, counting death as nothing so long as the
dying eyes still turn to it. And fear and dulness and indolence and
appetite--which, indeed, are no more than fear's three crippled brothers
who make ambushes and creep by night--are against him, to delay him, to
hold him off, to hamper and beguile and kill him in that quest."

H. G. Wells ("The History of Mr. Polly").




Captivity




CHAPTER I


As long as Marcella could remember, the old farm-house had lain in
shadows, without and within.