He looked far off, wistfully, to the great pile of the Bürgenstock, the one place in the whole world that for him was most rich in tender memories. And yet he knew that its undulating blueness hid hard, relentless rock, as unyielding as the very hand of death itself.

"Love," he said slowly, his heart swelling with the deep sense of his loss, "love should lead to happiness and peace—not to conflict, murder, and sudden death."

And he lay there pondering, until at last, as always in the end, his better genius triumphed. And when the evening sun[42]shine turned the windows of the distant hamlets into tongues of flame and set the waters in the little bay a-dancing, he rowed slowly back to the hotel, his own resourceful English self again.

[42]

Far up on the side of the Bürgenstock a dim light shone—a faint glow, until a cloud bank, stealing ever nearer, nearer, crept between like some soft curtain, and the silent mystery of the evening fell upon the lake, and wrapped the mountains in a velvet pall.

[43]

[43]

CHAPTER IV

early a week had passed since Paul reached the Mecca of his pilgrimage. Other guests at the hotel had seen little of him, except as they glimpsed him of a morning as he made an early start to some favourite haunt; or again as he returned at night-fall, to pass quickly through the chattering groups upon the terrace or about the hall and retire to his suite, where usually his dinner was served in solitary state.

His resolutely maintained seclusion was so marked that even his English friends, accustomed as they were to the exclusiveness of their kind, commented on it. Barclay openly lamented, for, as he said, "Was not Sir Paul the best of[44] company when he chose, and why come here to this gay garden spot to mope?"

[44]

Daisy Livingstone, the American girl, from that meeting in the train had found a peculiar attraction in her big Englishman, as she called Verdayne playfully when speaking of him to her friends. She knew now, of course, that he was the famous Sir Paul Verdayne, the personage so prominent in British public affairs. And she remembered, too, with a woman's quick intuition for a heart forlorn, Paul's sad, almost melancholy face.

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