To argue with this sort of thing was, of course, no work for me. I listened in silence, and concealed the pity combined with annoyance that was surging in my breast. I hated hiding from this religious-minded but parochial man that I was going on the stage, for it seemed mean to do so; but I also felt it was no good putting him to needless pain and very likely spoiling the effect of the May Meetings and doing him harm. So I changed the subject and asked him about the prizes. He had been to the Army and Navy Stores for these, and had bought _Longfellow’s Poems_, and _Robinson Crusoe_, and _St. Winifred’s_, and _Masterman Ready_, and _Hours with a Microscope_ and _Hours with a Telescope_, and _Eyes and no Eyes_, and many another fine, old, crusted work, familiar enough to me in the past. In fact, I realised with interest that the Doctor’s mind was standing still, and though there was something grand in a small way to see this steadfast attitude, like a light-house, to use a poetical simile, casting its unchanging beam over the tumultuous seas of Merivale, yet, somehow, in the atmosphere of the Strand, London (for “The Bishop’s Keys” were merely round a corner from the main thoroughfare), the beam of the Doctor was reduced to a mere night-light. By good luck he was going to an evening May Meeting at nine o’clock, and he invited me to accompany him to hear an eminent Colonial Bishop on the Spread of Christianity in the Frigid Zone; but with unexpected courage I withstood him, pleaded an engagement, which was true, as it was a Dramatic School night, and left him at the threshold of Exeter Hall. Our parting was marked by a cordiality that both of us were far from feeling; for I knew that I had disappointed the Doctor; and though, of course, he little knew that he had disappointed me, he had; and I felt an overpowering wish not to see him again. I had, in fact, now broken definitely with my past, and when, therefore, Aunt Augusta suggested that my week’s holiday should be spent at Merivale, I negatived the idea without a division, as they say. Aunt Augusta then rose to the occasion, with her usual kindness and generosity, and proposed a few days at a place familiar to her in Brittany. “It is wild and lonely,” she said, “but it is very beautiful, and I can do some sketching if the weather permits, and you can practise elocution among the sand dunes and shout yourself hoarse.” This offer of seeing a foreign country was far too good to refuse, and though financially such a thing was beyond my private resources, I had now made an arrangement with Aunt Augusta by which it was definitely understood that any advances which she might be good enough to make for the moment should be amply recognised at a later period in my career, when money ceased to be the vital object it was at present.