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He sat down then and there and acknowledged his cheque. Then he rough-hewed the themes of another two tales. Finally, he retired—to lie awake until dawn.

That morning he visited a firm of bookmakers.

Grey Ruby, however, was being mentioned. They would not lay him more than twenty-five sovereigns to one.

After a little reflection, Simon wrote them a cheque for four hundred pounds—an act which reduced his balance to eleven pounds ten.

Goodwood was looking superb.

It was a perfect day, airy yet cloudless. Rain had fallen in the night and, stopping at cock-crow, left everything refreshed. Distance was clean-cut. For such as had eyes, the sheep grazing in the valleys made sharp white dots upon the green, the Isle of Wight rode like a ship at anchor between earth and heaven. Background, indeed, had much to answer for, lending the meeting the air of the old prize-ring, rigged like lightning, deep in some unsuspecting dingle of the suspected countryside. The artifice of gardens and playgrounds, jealously kept against the builder’s hand, had here no place. Time had stepped back into an England where men passed out of doors on to the open road and, lifting up their eyes, beheld more meads than bricks and woods than mortar, where parishes were worlds and London Town was half a fairy-tale.