Two days out they ran into a gale, and Walter, who was a good sailor, had the promenade deck almost to himself. Standing up forward, an arm round a stanchion for a brace, the spray in his face, it seemed as if the cobwebs which had been smothering him were blown away. He could look at himself calmly, objectively. One question after another posed itself, and he sought the answers, not as an infatuated fool, but as a man who has "suffered unto wisdom." What was there for him to hope for from Mabel? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Even if she relented, it was a sorry prospect. If now, after six years, after her youth had passed, she suddenly decided to pick up what she had so long despised, it would be in discouragement. He had more disillusions than enough of his own. And Mabel in slippers was a revolting idea. The romantic thing for him to do, now that romance was dead, was to kill himself on the lady's front doorstep. But the age of romance had passed for him. For the first time in six years he looked out upon a future in which Mabel played no part. Beatrice had said he must find some useful work. There was the Oxford offer. Of course every acquisition to the museum of human knowledge is worth while. But it was very hard for him to apply this theory to his specialty. What good did it do any one to have him piece together the broken fragments of a semicivilization, so long dead? He could think of no branch of study which more truly deserved Carlyle's jibe of "dry-as-dust." It was perhaps better than suicide, but was there no more human sort of utility for him? As Beatrice had said, the "social conscience" was keen in him. He wanted to serve the people of his day and generation. The one activity he could think of was suggested by the news in Yetta's letters of the English Socialist newspaper which Isadore Braun was editing and to which she was occasionally contributing. His surplus money, quite a lot of it had piled up in the last three years, would help immensely. Even if they could not raise enough to maintain a daily, his income would suffice for a weekly. The three of them would be a strong editorial combination. More and more the idea attracted him. They could make a representative publication of it. Isadore with his faith in the political party, Yetta in close touch with the trade-unions, and he to furnish a broader, more philosophical expression of the movement of revolt. They were three able, intelligent people who were not afraid. What better thing could he do with the remnant of his life than to weld them into an organized force? Gradually they would attract other brains to their group. Just such an intellectual centre was what the movement needed. The idea at least had the virtue of stirring a wave of true enthusiasm in him.