when she pressed him he said he could not afford, his means not being limitless. He did not add that at the moment it would have been more correct to say that his income was by no means so large as the world believed it to be, one or two speculations having turned out considerable losses. He was not embarrassed as yet, but the next few months would be full of anxiety, with another brilliant success or a startling failure at the end of them. He had never before felt any desire to share his business worries with anyone, had never, in fact, had anyone with whom he was tempted to do so, but now to a certain degree it irritated him to know that if he had desired to confide in Agatha it would lead to no good result; the mere fact that she was not his helpmeet made him wish for such an one. Maddison parted with the Wests at Brighton Station, and having confided his luggage and paraphernalia to the carrier who had driven in to meet him, set forth on foot for Rottingdean. The air was crisper, fresher here than it had been in London, and as he strode along the broad pathway on the edge of the cliff, drinking in the salt breeze, he felt that he would have been perfectly content had only Marian been by his side. Then his thoughts turned to the Wests. The man was strong and could take care of himself, but he was sorry for Agatha. There was to him something pathetic in her foolish, pretty helplessness, the pathos that there is in a dumb beast’s futile efforts to understand a world that is beyond his ken. He knew now that he could paint her portrait, not in the jeering spirit he had intended, but so that he would show in the pretty face the struggling of a soul unborn. Would it ever see the light of life? Perhaps better not, he thought; souls suffer more keenly than mere clay. He paused when he had left the houses some way behind, and looked out over the white-flecked sea, boundless, apparently, save for the distant bank of mist that crept treacherously along; away to the right the dun cloud of smoke over the town; behind him the rolling downs; to the left, Rottingdean, nestling down in its cradle; and before him the white-flecked sea. No living being in sight, yet thousands so near. He felt lonely, and there swept over him a passionate longing for Marian, to have her standing with her hand in his, looking out with him over the white-flecked sea; they two together, what would it matter then if there were no other living soul in the world? It took all his will to master his impulse to retrace his steps, and to go straight back to town. Could he endure the staying down here? Could he wait even the few days he had promised to remain before going up to see her? Where was she at this moment? What was she doing? Was she, perhaps, thinking of him?