“Nothing. I was turning over an old Bradshaw, and details of the journey caught my eye. Next morning I left Norwich. I was abroad two years.” “In France all the time?” “No. France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy. Perhaps I saw the countries all the better for the necessity I was under of travelling very cheaply--so cheaply, indeed, I wonder how I did it. I walked oftener than rode, and dispensed with hotel dinners whenever possible. I have a diary of the two years’ travel.” “You will let me read that?” Isabel asked quietly. He hesitated; his eyes fixed absently on the windows. “Yes, I will let you read it. It is foolish, boyish; I dare not read it myself.” “For what reason?” “Because there is nothing I hold more in horror than the ghost of my former self. I deny identity,” he added with sudden bitterness. “How can one be held responsible for the thoughts and acts of the being who bore his name years ago? The past is no part of our existing self; we are free of it, it is buried. That release is the pay Time owes us for doing his work.” Isabel regarded him earnestly; her cheek gathered a warmer hue for a moment. “You may read it if you care to,” he resumed, falling back to calmness. “There is no one else to whom I would show it.” Isabel waited for him to continue. He sat, bent forward, his hands about one knee. “And you returned to England with plans?” she asked at length, finding him persevere in silence. “No, only with experience. I came back because I had news of my mothers illness. She was dead and buried before I got home.” “It strikes me as curious,” he resumed rapidly, “that my childhood, boyhood in fact, has utterly gone from my memory. I suppose that is why I have such slight sympathy with children. I have often tried desperately to recover the consciousness of my young days: it has gone. My father, my mother, I cannot, recall their relations to me, nor mine to them. Nay, facts even have left my memory. I know scarcely anything before the beginning of my student years, and even those are vanishing, I find. I live only in the present.” “But the future?” “No, from looking forward I shrink as much as from looking back.” There was another silence. “But since you returned to England?” Isabel inquired, “have you never thought of another profession?” Kingcote laughed. “I had crazy projects for studying art. Gabriel put that into my head. But my zeal did not last. It is the same in everything; I lack persistence.” “And you have----” “Done nothing, you would say,” Kingcote supplied in the pause she made. “Literally nothing; wasted my time, lost my best years. The necessary consequence of being made up of _wants_, without the powers which could satisfy them. At present I am engaged in the first work I have done for years.” “At last, then!” Isabel exclaimed.