at Pastimes with me! "Your friend, Charmion Fane." I threw down the letter and seized the sheet of calculations in an agony of eagerness. A glance at the final addition brought relief. Yes! I could do it--pay my full share, and still have a handsome margin left over. Once satisfied on that point, there could not be a moment's hesitation, for it would be glorious to share a house with Charmion, and to have her companionship for some months of each year. My whole life was transfixed by the prospect, and yet she was right! I could not have accepted the offer if it had meant a permanent settling down to a luxurious country life. I was too restless, too eager for experience, too anxious to discover my very own work, and to do it in my very own way. The picture of that old English house, with its panelled rooms, set in a surrounding wealth of flowers and green, gripped hold of my imagination; but here was an odd thing. It was powerless to banish another picture, in which there was no rose and no blue, but only dull neutral tints--the picture of a basement flat in a grey London road, with electric burners instead of sun, and for view, a vista of passing feet belonging to bodies cut off from sight. I could not, even for Charmion, give up the prospect of that flat, and all that it had come to mean; but--let me acknowledge it honestly--it was balm and relief to know that I could have a means of escape, and that at culminating moments of weariness, when everything seemed wry and disappointing, and the whole weight of seven storeys seemed to be pressing down on my brains, I could bang my door, turn the key, and fly off to peace and beauty, and a healing pandering to personal tastes! Woman is a complex character, and I am no better than my kind. I feel it in me to be an angel of self-denial and patience for, say, the third of the year! I know for a certain fact that I should have a bad lapse if I tried to keep it up for the remaining thirds. Now, thanks to Charmion, the way was made easy, and I could put my hand to the plough without fear of drawing back. I leapt out of bed in a tingle of excitement. Impossible to lie still when things were happening at such a rapid rate. The sun was shining, and, looking at a belt of trees in the distance, I could catch a faint shimmer of green. It is perhaps the most intoxicating moment of the year, when that first gleam of spring greets the eye, and this special year it held an added exhilaration, for it seemed to speak of the budding of fresh personal life.