[18] Unhappily these have not been recorded _in extenso_ by Mr. Budd. (LIT. EXEC.) “But you’re all so hackneyed,” he cried with peals of good-humoured laughter. “These have all been done before, every one of them!” “Well, tell us _your_ idea, Gav,” smiled Monty, with a touch of defiance. “I propose Brittany,” he answered quite simply. There was a ripple of admiring approbation. Brittany was decided on. Well had the choice been justified. Long had been the bicycle expeditions through that unexplored fringe of glamorous old Celtic seaboard; to St. Malo and Cancale, Rennes and Brest, and many another half-forgotten shrine of old romance had they sped. And healthy had been the life: reading from dawn till breakfast, bathing and romping before luncheon, exploring caves before tea, collecting shells till supper, and taking moonlit or starlit tramps over the neighbouring menhirs and dolmens before going merrily to bed. Thus the weeks flew past, with the inexorable rapidity of monotonously happy hours. Nature grew rhythmical with the youthful happiness of the Wallace reading party. With elaborate regularity the ebbs and flows coursed over the gleaming sands; up rose the sun, bejewelled the meridian sky, and set once more; each eventide there came an unique and quotidian miracle of colour attendant upon its marine _accouchement_. And nightly Gaveston stood breathless, hushed, pulsating, beneath the twinkling of little, little stars, so deliberate and glamorous that they seemed like to the remote, liturgical swinging of lanthorns, carven with outlandish birds and belacquered with esoteric fishes, in some half-religious dancing festival of Old Japan. “I don’t think I was ever so happy!” said David one morning at breakfast. And no one disagreed with him. * * * * * It was with David that Gaveston passed most of his time. He always found him a satisfying companion, ever eager to listen and encourage, and to David one glowing afternoon, lying on the sand in the shady mouth of a stalactitous cave, Gaveston exposed his new determination, his latest programme. “Power!” he said succinctly. “Power! Power!” echoed back the stalactites. “Power?” added David. “Yes, power,” nodded Gaveston. There was a silence. Far off the waves lapped. A sea-mew flashed against the blue. A stalactite dripped. And Gaveston went on relentlessly to explain himself. Not for such as he the cowardly retirement into the cloister of Art. Not for such as he the perverse pursuit of an unattainable past, or the artificial archaism of creeds outworn. What were these but phases, halts upon the Greater Pilgrimage? “Oh, quite,” said David, letting the warm sand trickle dreamily through his fingers. Power! He must impose Truth upon his fellows, the truth about themselves, the truth about the world of yesterday and to-day and to-morrow. That was power. That was life. And how else to do it but by the Pen?