No one had ever been such a victim as he! Everyone misjudged him! He could not even be allowed to write his books in peace!
The thought of his book brought new disagreeable reflections. Aimée Le Breton had not liked it. Why the deuce should he care what Aimée Le Breton thought? Yet—yes, certainly, her opinion had put him out of favor with his work. Women were the devil’s own mischief.
And while he thought this, he unconsciously fought with an impulse which he felt to be mastering him, to go to Aimée Le Breton, and drink big draughts of the peace she distilled.
How she had calmed him that afternoon when he had gone to the White House, and told her of his “row” with the Colonel. It had not been her words. They had been few enough. It was herself. There was a calming atmosphere about her. He had seen and noted, more particularly afterwards, that her attitude towards him had changed for the better.
As he walked, his impulse to tell her all the rest of the story about Phyllis, took definite shape. He wanted her good opinion. He wished it was not so damnably late, he would go in and see her. If he could see her he would have refreshing sleep.
But he would cross the field, tired and worn out as he was, and look at the White House before entering the bungalow.
Davis was not expecting him, and had taken “french leave,” locked up the bungalow, and gone to Hastings, where friends persuaded him to stay the night.
This Philip was to find out later.
Reaching the gate of the bungalow, the young man paused to light a cigarette. “Pickett has been burning rubbish,” he said to himself, as he sniffed the odor of burning.
Leaving the road by a stile for the field, Philip fixed his eyes on the upstairs windows of the White House. In two of them lights were burning. Behind one of the two windows, probably, was the calm maiden who had been so strangely filling his thoughts. He vaguely wished he knew which.