Peter said good-bye, and went. He loved Lord Evelyn, and his eyes
were sad because he had thrown back his offer on his hands. He didn't
think Lord Evelyn had many more years before him, though he was only
fifty-five; and for a moment he wondered whether he couldn't, after all,
accept that offer till the end came. He even, at the garden wall, hung
for a moment in doubt, with the echo of that high, wistful voice in his
ears.

But before him the white road ran down from the olive-grey hills to the
little gay town by the blue sea's edge, and the sweetness of the scented
hills in the May sunshine caught him by the throat, and, questioning no
more, he took the road.

He loved Lord Evelyn; but the life he offered was not for Peter, not for
Thomas as yet; though Thomas, in the years to come, should choose his own
path. At present there was for both of them the merry, shifting life of
the roads, the passing friendships, lightly made, lightly loosed, the
olive hills, silver like ghostly armies in the pale moonlight, the
sweetness of the starry flowers at their twisted stems, the sudden blue
bays that laughed below bends of the road, the cities, like many-coloured
nosegays on a pale chain, the intimate sweetness of lemon gardens by day
and night, the happy morning on the hills and sea.

For these--Peter analysed the distinction--are, or may be, for all
alike. There is no grabbing here; a man may share the overflowing sun not
with one but with all. The down-at-heels, limping, broken, army of the
Have-Nots are not denied such beauty and such peace as this, if they will
but take it and be glad. The lust to possess here finds no fulfilment;
having nothing, yet possessing all things, the empty-handed legion laughs