'I'm beginning again. I--I let go a little. Hump, I can't do it. It's too strong for me. I go to pieces. You don't know. I've got to fight--all the time. Do the things I used to do--make myself work hard, hard. Keep accounts. Every penny. Leave girls alone. It means grubbing. I can't bear to think of it.' He spread out his hands. 'In some ways it seems to help to let go. You know--stirs me. Brings the Power. Makes me want to write, create things. But it's too much like burning the candle at both ends.' Humphrey got out his old cob pipe, and carefully scraped it. 'That's probably just what it is,' he remarked. 'Oh, Hump, what is it makes us feel this way! You know--girls, and all that.' Humphrey lighted his pipe. 'You don't know how it makes me feel to see you and Mildred. Just the way she looks. And you. Corinne and I don't look like that. We were flirting. I didn't mean it. She didn't, either. It's been beastly. But still it didn't seem beastly all the time.' 'It wasn't,' said Humphrey, between puffs. 'Don't be too hard on yourself. And you haven't hurt Corinne. She likes you. But just the same, she's only flirting. She'd never give up her ambitions for you.' 'There's something I want to feel. Something wonderful. I've been thinking of it, looking at that star. I want to love like--like that. Or nothing.' Humphrey leaned on the railing over the beach, and smoked reflectively. The rose tints were deepening into scarlet and gold. The star was fading. 'Hen,' said Humphrey, speaking out of a sober reverie, 'I don't know that I've ever seen anybody reach a star. Our lives, apparently, are passed right here on this earth.' Henry couldn't answer this. But he felt himself in opposition to it. His hands were clenched at his side. 'I begin my life to-day,' he thought. But back of this' determination, like a dark current that flowed silently but irresistibly out of the mists of time into the mists of other time, he dimly, painfully knew that life, the life of this earth, was carrying him on. And on. As if no resolution mattered very much. As if you couldn't help yourself, really. He set his mouth. And thrust out his chin a little. He had not read Henley's _Invictus_. It would have helped him, could he have seen it just then. 'Let's walk,' he said. They breakfasted at Stanley's. Here there was a constant clattering of dishes and a smell of food. People drifted in and out--men who worked along Simpson Street, and a few family groups--said 'Good-morning. Looks like a warm day.' Picked their teeth. Paid their checks to Mrs Stanley at the front table, or had their meal tickets punched. They walked slowly up the street as far as the Sunbury House corner, and crossed over to the _Voice_ office. Each glanced soberly at the hotel as they passed.