He laughed. “Yes; _very_ empty—so the nurses said. Well, it was a bad beginning. The physical emptiness was soon remedied; but the mental and spiritual void remained unfilled. I’ve lived an utterly lonely life; and the misery of it was, I didn’t seem able to accept companionship; I had no capacity for friendship, no wish for homelife. I have always been seeking, seeking, seeking for something I could not find. Lots of people wanted to be friendly; heaps of people tried to be kind; but I could not take their friendship, or accept their kindness. To misquote a well-known saying, I was ‘_in_ the world but not _of_ the world.’ And then I had a vice.” “A vice?” Her eyes, which never left his face, darkened with apprehension. “Yes; a vice. Oh, not drink, or drugs, or other depravity. I have kept my body sane and clean, and without much effort either. I love the sea too well, and swim in it too often, for any form of moral squalor to have a chance.” “Squalor!” she exclaimed, with a fine disdain. “_You_ would have had no need for squalor, you beautiful boy! All women must have loved you.” “Boy?” He laughed. “Good Lord! I was never a boy! I was born with a grown-up soul. Yes, they were kind; but I wanted none of their kindness. All women were to me mere shadows. Love never called to me.” “The vice?” she said. “What was it?” “A mental thing. A morbid craving to look on at other people’s joys; to view them, without sharing them; an absolute hunger to see home life, though I had none of my own. This led me into the low-down practice of prowling about after dark, peering in at lighted windows, like a lonely soul from another world, spying on bliss he might not share. I began it as quite a little chap, peeping and running away. The passion grew as I grew. When my day’s work was over, I would walk miles to stalk unshuttered windows. Many a time I have narrowly escaped being run in as a probable burglar. Many a fright I have given to innocent people who looked up suddenly and surprised my uncanny face pressed against the glass. I know now what I was seeking. In some sub-conscious part of me I knew that somewhere in the world was a window through which I should look and see at last a room which would be HOME. “So I prowled on. I was prowling to-night. But I never before wanted to be invited to enter. I preferred to be outside. And—until to-night—I never realised what a low-down habit it was. To my morbid emptiness it seemed no wrong toward happy people, that I should just look upon their joys.” “But why—to-night?”