But the months went by without healing Paul's grief. Time only coated it
with a dull, callous crust. He had got into a hard way of taking everything
as it came. He did not fly from society, or ape the manners of the
misanthrope; he went to London, and stayed about and played the game. But
all with a stony, bald indifference which made people wonder.
No faintest inkling of his story had ever leaked out. And it seemed an
incomprehensible attitude towards life for a young and fortunate man.
Those who had looked for great things from his birthday speech shook their
heads sadly at the unfulfilment.
So time passed on, until one day at the beginning of February, nearly five
years after the light had gone out of his life, a circumstance happened
which proved a turning-point of great mag
