What kept hitting him to the heart as he glanced sideways at Christie’s profile was its innocence. “She doesn’t look like a grown woman whose deepest self-respect has been outraged,” he said to himself. “She looks like a proud little girl whose hidden fairytale has been violated by some heavy-footed elder.”

Wolf was honest enough with himself, in the midst of all these crisscross communings, to recognize that there was, somewhere within him, a furtive upwelling of profound gratitude to the gods. His life-illusion had been given back to him! He was still the same Wolf Solent who had seen that face on the steps, who had seen that animal feeding in the paddock at Basingstoke, who had heard the milk-cans clattering on the platform at Sandbourne Port. He would not have to return to Preston Lane, to take up his burden, with his soul a shapeless lump of whale’s blubber! He was still himself. He was still the old Wolf, whose philosophy⁠—such as it was⁠—kept its hand on the rudder.