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'Percy,' he said, with emotion in his voice, 'what you have been saying has had a tremendously tonic effect. I daresay you can imagine the view of the world is simply that I am a fool. I am not made of wood and such support as yours is a wonderful stimulus.'

Percy looked down at the floor steadily for about a minute, hearing himself praised; just as he would had he scored a century for his old school and was being congratulated by the Captain of the Eleven or the Headmaster: 'Splendid, Lamport. A faultless innings!' Then he looked up, smiling a little bashfully. 'Will you have another glass of sherry, René? It is some stuff Simon recommended.'

And they moved back to the table where the sherry and glasses had been placed.

Mary appeared followed by Hester, and she saw at once, by the faces of the two men, that both were agreeably excited; obviously their relations had been changed and cemented, by some emotional impact occurring for the first time. Percy wore an expression with which she was familiar. He had looked like that when he had appeared for the first time in coast-guard uniform, in the War to End War: or when, for instance, he had broken with the firm of family solicitors on learning that they had behaved with typical professional caddishness and disregard for the laws of fair-play in a case which he had entrusted to them. She guessed that her husband must have gone quixotic in emulation of her brother, and that he had just shown his mettle in setting about some windmill, to prove that he was just as mad as René. Her eyes rested with a gentle toleration on the pair of them. Perhaps, after all, they were right and she was wrong. But she found it very difficult to take either of them seriously.