Was there something in life that he had missed? Calmly now he could ask and search the question. Till now, since its first coming, it had been as a gnawing tumour, as an empoisoned wound within him--an inward fire, a pulsing abscess to relieve whose tortures he, as a wild beast thus maddened that turns its jaws upon its vitals, had bruised himself to madness in frantic goadings of his mind. Now he could review it calmly, almost dispassionately. The thing was out of him, no longer burning in his brain. Till now, he had thought upon it in frenzy of despair, now he could stand as it were away from it--turn it this way and that in examination with his hands, smile and shake his head in puzzlement, and put it aside to go to his duties with his boys, return and take it up and puzzle it again. Was there something in life that he had missed? Yes, there was something. He could unriddle it as far as that. He was at peace now, but there was nothing in that peace. Some attribute was missing. This was peace: but it was emptiness. This was quietness: but a thousand leagues remote from happiness. Happiness was an active thing, a stirring thing, a living thing, a warm thing, a pulsing thing. Barren here, cold here. Let the mind run, let the mind run about a thousand pleasures such as money could buy. They might be his for the asking. He had but to return to London, and they were his. Well, let the mind run. Back it would come disconsolate, empty-handed, with no treasures in its pack. Nothing attracted him. Ah, but somewhere, somewhere, somewhere, that thing was--the live thing, the stirring thing, the active thing, the warm thing. Something that he had missed in life: that was certain. Happiness its name: that was assured. Where? In what? How to be found? Only negative answers to these. Well, shake the head over it and put it away; smile and confess its bafflement. Here are things to be done. Do them and return to puzzle again in a little while. So and in this wise quietly through the days--standing aside in this retreat and looking at life as one that, furnishing a room, stands to stare at a bare corner, and only knows something is wanted there, and only knows that nothing of all he has will suit, and only turns away but to return again and stare. CHAPTER VII ESSIE I That simile of Mr. Wriford's condition in these days to one who, rearranging the furniture of his room, stares in constant bafflement at a bare corner and can by no means determine with what to fill it, may be advanced a further step. The decorator's eye, narrowly judging all the objects that are at his disposal, will in time, in a "better than nothing" spirit, turn more frequently to one, and presently he will try it: there came a time when it occurred to Mr. Wriford, dispassionately revolving the vacancy in his life, that there was one might fill it--Essie.