I cannot say that I was unhappy. I was rather in that state of mind which the American people, with its gift for the happy, unexpected word, have long spoken of as "mad." I was certainly mad. I was mad with J. Howard Brokenshire first of all; I was mad with his family for having got up and left me without so much as a nod; I was mad with Hugh for having made me fall in love with him; I was mad with Larry Strangways for not having been on the spot; and I was most of all mad with myself. I had been boastful and bumptious; I had been disrespectful and absurd. It was foolish to make worse enemies than I had already. Mrs. Rossiter wouldn't keep me now. There would be no escape from Mrs. Applegate and the Home for Working-Girls. The still summer beauty of the afternoon added to my wretchedness. All round and before me there was luxury and joyousness and sport. The very sea was in a playful mood, lapping at my feet like a tamed, affectionate leviathan, and curling round the ledges in the offing with delicate lace-like spouts of spume. Sea-gulls swooped and hovered with hoarse cries and a lovely effect of silvery wings. Here and there was a sail on the blue, or the smoke of a steamer or a war-ship. Eastons Point, some two or three miles away, was a long, burnished line of ripening wheat. To right and to left of me were broken crags, red-yellow, red-brown, red-green, where lovers and happy groups could perch or nestle carelessly, thrusting trouble for the moment to a distance. I had to bring my trouble with me. If it had not been for trouble I shouldn't have been there. There wasn't a soul in the world who would fight to take my part but Hugh, and I was, in all my primary instincts, a clinging, parasitic thing that hated to stand alone.