In fact there was really nothing at all to do in Seacliffe during the winter season except to take a walk along the cliffs. Everything wore an air of depression--the dingy rain-sodden refreshment kiosks, the shuttered bandstand, the rusting tram rails on the promenade, along which no trams had run since the preceding October, the melancholy pier pavilion, forlornly decorated with the tattered advertisements of last season's festivities. Nothing remained of the town's social amenities but the cindered walk along the cliff edges, and this, except for patches of mud and an absence of strollers, was much the same as usual. Speed and Helen walked vigorously, as people do on the first day of their holidays--grimly determined to extract every atom of nourishment out of the much-advertised air. They climbed the slope of the Beach hill, past the gaunt five-storied basemented boarding-houses, past the yachting club-house, past the marine gardens, past the rows of glass shelters, and then on to the winding cinder-path that rose steeply to the edge of the cliffs. Meanwhile the mist turned to rain and the sea and the sky merged together into one vast grey blur without a horizon. Then they went back to the Beach Hotel for tea. Then they read the magazines until dinner-time, and after dinner, more magazines until bedtime. The next day came the same routine again; walk along the cliffs in the morning; walk along the cliffs in the afternoon; tea; magazines; dinner; magazines; bed. Speed discovered in the hotel a bookcase entirely filled with cheap novels that had been left behind by previous visitors. He read some of them until their small print gave him a headache. Helen revelled in them. In the mornings, by way of a variant from the cliff walk, they took to sitting on the windless side of the municipal shelters, absorbed in the novels. It was melancholy, and yet Speed felt with some satisfaction that he was undoubtedly resting, and that, on the whole, he was enduring it better than he had expected. III Then slowly there grew in him again the thought of Clare. It was as if, as soon as he gained strength at all, that strength should bring with it turmoil and desire, so that the only peace that he could ever hope for was the joyless peace of exhaustion. The sharp sea-salt winds that brought him health and vigour brought him also passion, passion that racked and tortured him into weakness again.