"After a war like the one there's just been it always takes a long time to settle down, doesn't it? And all the young generation aren't as you say. For instance, I have a splendid sister who is as modern as anybody, but she isn't immoral and she isn't hard-hearted and she doesn't think she knows everything. I think many girls now are fine, with their courage and independence and honesty. Hypocrisy is leaving England at last. It's been with us quite long enough."
Lady Bell-Hall shook her head. "I daresay you're right. I'm sure I don't know, I don't understand any of you. I'm lost in this new world. The sooner I die the better." She got up and walked with great dignity across the room. She looked back at Henry rather wistfully. "You do seem a kind young man and Charles is very fond of you. I don't want to be unjust. I don't indeed!" She suddenly put up her hand and realized the escaping lock of hair. She cried, "Oh, dear!" in a little frightened whisper, then hurried from the room.
Henry waited a little, then, feeling his own loneliness and desolation in the chilly place, broke out into the garden. He wandered down the paths until he found himself in a little rough-grassed orchard that hung precariously on the bend of the hill, above a little trout-stream and a clumsy, chattering water-mill.
Under the bare trees he stood and stared at himself. As a boy the principal note in his character perhaps had been his suspicion of human nature, and his suspicion of it especially in its relation to himself. The War, his life in London, his close intimacy with Peter and Millie had robbed him of much of this, but these influences had not brought him to that stage of sophistication that would establish him upon such superiority that he need never be suspicious again. He would in all probability never become sophisticated. There was something naïve in his character that would accompany him to his grave; he was none the worse for that.
And it was this very naïveté that Lady Bell-Hall had just roused. As he walked in the orchard he was miserable, lonely, self-distrustful. He seemed to be deserted of all men. Christina was far, far away. Millie and Peter did not exist. His work was nothing. He was out of tune with the universe. He felt behind him the house, the lands, the country falling into ruin. His affection for Duncombe, his master, was affronted by the vision of brother Tom, flushed and eager, selling his family for thirty pieces of silver. He and his generation could assist only at the breaking of the old world, not at the making of the new. . . .
He looked up and saw between the leafless branches of the trees the sky shredding into lines of winged and fleecy little clouds that ran in cohorts across a sky suddenly blue. The wind had fallen; there was utter stillness. The sun, itself invisible, suddenly with a royal gesture flung its light in sheets of silver across the brown tree-trunks, the thick and tangled grass. The light was so suddenly brilliant that Henry, looking up, was dazzled. It seemed to him that for an instant the sky was filled with shining forms.
He had the sense that he had known so often before that in another moment some great vision would be granted him.
He waited, his hand above his eyes, his heart suddenly flooded with happiness and reassurance. A little wind rose, a sigh ran through the trees and drops of rain like glittering sparks from the sun touched his forehead. Shadow ran along the ground as though from the sweep of a giant's wing.
Strangely comforted he walked back to the house.