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 settled purpose. Something which to an alien can only be described by negatives; if any idea can at all be arrived at by such—any idea however rudimentary, phantasmal or vague—it can only be acquired at all by a process of exclusions. The name is "The Gloom"; the rest is a birthright. Those who can understand it need no telling or explaining; others can no more understand it than those born without eyes can see. It is a quality opposed to no other; it can exist with any. It can co-exist with fighting, with song, with commerce. It makes no change in other powers or qualities of the children of Adam. Those who possess it can be good or bad, clever or silly, heroic or mean. It can add force to imagination, understand nature, give quiet delight or spiritual pain. And the bulk of those who have it do not think of it or even know it: or if they do, hardly ever speak of it.

Athlyne had his full share of it. Being young and strong and of a class in life which seldom lacks amusement he had not been given to self-analysis. But all the same, though he did not think of it, the force was there. In his present emotional crisis it brought the lover in him up to the Celtic ideal. An ideal so strangely saturated with love that his whole being, his aims and ambitions, his hopes and fears, his pleasures and pains yielded place to it and for the time became merged in it. To him the whole word seemed to revolve round Joy as a pivotal point. Nothing could be of any use or interest which did not have touch of her or lead to her. So, he wanted to know beyond the mere measure of intellectual belief if Joy loved him or was on the way to doing so. When he was satisfied as to this he would be free to act; but not before.

On the journey he had allowed the chauffeur to drive, as he wanted to think over the whole matter without fear of interruption. He had sat in the tonneau and made from time to time notes in his pocket-book. He had now made up his mind that he would write a letter to Colonel Ogilvie