And Paul's father grunted with satisfaction as he said: "I told you so."

Thus the summer days went by in the strengthening of Paul's character-- trying always to live up to an ideal--trying ever to dominate his grief-- but never trying to forget.

By the autumn shooting time his health was quite restored, and except that he looked a year or so older there were no outward traces of the passing through that valley of the shadow, from whence he had escaped with just his life.

But the three weeks of his lady's influence had changed the inner man beyond all recognition. His spirit was stamped with her nameless distinction, and all the vistas she had opened for him to the tree of knowledge he now followed up. No smallest incident of his day seemed unconnected with some thought or wish of hers--so that in truth she still guided and moulded him by the power of her great soul.

But in spite of all these things, the weeks and months held hours of aching longing and increasing anxiety to know how she fared. If she should be ill. If their hope was coming true, then now she must be suffering, and suffering all alone. Sometimes the agony of the thought was more than Paul could bear, and took him off with Pike alone into the leafless woods which crowned a hill at the top of the park. And then he would pause, and look out at the view, and the dull November sky, a madness of agonising unrest torturing his heart.