Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/288

 flames the faces of the two women, Grace and Fawnie. It was amazing how distinct they were—the delicate aquiline of Grace's profile, the disdainful yet tender arch of her mouth—the glow of health beneath Fawnie's dusky skin, the rich convolutions of her hair, her deep, mirthful eyes.

He would stare and stare till he could bear it no longer, then he would snatch up Buckskin from the floor, and pace the room with him, singing loudly some college song that he had never thought to sing again. Sometimes he would recite bits of things he had learned as a youth. Not so long ago, and yet what had happened since then! Buckskin would listen as though he understood every word. His favourite was the song from Hippolytus. When Derek would declaim in his rich, full voice:

O take me to the mountain O, Past the great pines and through the wood, Up where the lean hounds softly go, A whine for wild thing's blood, And madly flies the dappled roe. O God, to shout and speed them there An arrow by my chestnut hair Drawn tight, and one keen glistening spear—Ah, if I could!

Buckskin could not restrain his rapture. He would shout at the top of his lungs and thump Derek on the chest.

"It's all very well to be enthusiastic," Derek would admonish, "but you ought to restrain yourself to the end of the piece. You nearly drowned me out."

One moist evening, the first of April, when the heavy air was fragrant with the essence of spring, Vale saw the figure of a man standing with bent head, just inside the gate, beneath the tallest walnut tree. He stood so motionless and