dressing-gown, at once modestly lowered his eyes again.

But Henry Rogers did not see the passer-by in whose delicate mind a
point of taste had thus vanquished curiosity, for his thoughts had
flown far across the pale-blue sky, behind the cannon-ball clouds, up
into that scented space and distance where summer was already winging
her radiant way towards the earth. Visions of June obscured his sight,
and something in the morning splendour brought back his youth and
boyhood. He saw a new world spread about him--a world of sunlight,
butterflies, and flowers, of smooth soft lawns and shaded gravel
paths, and of children playing round a pond where rushes whispered in
a wind of long ago. He saw hayfields, orchards, tea-things spread upon
a bank of flowers underneath a hedge, and a collie dog leaping and
tumbling shoulder high among the standing grass.... It was all
curiously vivid, and with a sense of something about it unfading and
delightfully eternal. It could never pass, for instance, whereas....

'Ain't yer forgotten the nightcap?' sang out a shrill voice from
below, as a boy with a basket on his arm went down the street. He drew
back from the window, realising that he was a sight for all admirers.
Tossing the end of his cigarette in the direction of the cheeky
urchin, he settled himself again in the arm-chair before the glowing
grate-fire.

But the fresh world he had tasted came back with him. For Henry Rogers
stood this fine spring morning upon the edge of a new life. A long
chapter had just closed behind him. He was on the threshold of
another. The time to begin had come. And the thrill of his freedom now
at hand was very stimulating to his imagination. He was forty, and a
rich man. Twenty years of incessant and intelligent labour had brought