seemed to be the soft green cushions of moss studded with red pins that clung to the roots of the trees. For the first time in many months he thought of Leila, and was passionately glad that she, for one, had escaped the epidemic.
Gradually the new knowledge ceased to be a wholly discordant interruption in the theme of life. At times there were notes in this particular movement which still seemed to flat hideously, just as there had been chords in certain Chopin études which had begun by offending his ear, but which he had learned to incorporate into a wider musical comprehension. On one occasion, when John Ashmill boasted of having done indescribable things with his cousin Hilda, who lived in Halifax and went to a dancing school, the discord had been so great that it fairly drowned the theme. But by the time, a few months later, that Walter Dreer had come with a similar tale involving Bessie Day, a girl whom Paul had always thought of as dirty and bold, the class of facts of which Walter's exploit was an example had taken its place as mere ornamentation in the pattern, and the theme of life was repeating itself triumphantly above the questionable harmonies of this latest variation. Paul had reached the point where he could make sharp distinctions between phenomena such as Mrs. Wilcove's condition and Walter Dreer's immondices. The one was clothed in the miraculous, a little ugly, but necessary and condonable; the other was on a par with all the things in life one ignored.
Yet Paul was still under the spell of his chum. After all, there were long periods when the lurid subject was lost to view in the interest of games and excursions in the fields, and even when it recurred Walter could provide fresh details which filled out gaps in the puzzle. Moreover, Walter had become more discreet in impart-
