I sang as I walked, looking towards the golden light and sullen blue of the sea, where a storm was beating up with the west wind. Presently I realized that I was very tired, and I sat down to rest upon a little hilltop where I could see over the whole of Brighton. The wind brought up the rain, and I rose and began to descend the hill towards Brighton. I wondered apathetically if my sister was in Brighton or if they were all at Belhus still. Anyhow, I knew there would be someone at her house who {31} would give me something to eat. Then I turned round, and began deliberately to climb up the hill on to the Downs again. After all, I thought, I had come here to be alone, and did not want to see my sister particularly. The family might all be there, and anyhow I did not want to see anybody who loved me and could bias my mind. I had come down to get away from Willie for a little while--or rather from the thought of him, for it was rarely enough I saw him. If I went down to see Emma and Tom they would ask how Willie was, and really I did not know, and then how were the children. Well, I could thankfully answer that the children were always well. Why should I be supposed to have no other interests than Willie and my children? Willie was not, as a matter of fact, at all interesting to me. As to my children, I loved them very dearly, but they were not old enough, or young enough, to engross my whole mind. Then there was dear old Aunt Ben, who was so old that she would not tolerate any topic of conversation of more recent date than the marriage of Queen Victoria. What a curiously narrow life mine was, I thought, narrow, narrow, narrow, and so deadly dull. It was better even to be up there on the Downs in the drifting rain--though I was soaked to the skin and so desperately tired and hungry. I paused for shelter behind a shepherd's hut as I saw the lithe spare form of my brother-in-law, Sir Thomas, dash past, head down and eyes half closed against the rain. He did not see me, and I watched him running like a boy through the driving mist till he disappeared. He had come over from Lewes, I supposed. He was a J.P., and had perhaps been over to the court; he never rode where he could walk--or rather run.