He remembered that rock. A portion of it, facing the sea, was low and level, and formed a seat. On that he had sat many years ago, looking seaward, and then――not alone. He removed his beaver. There was a holiness in the spot, sanctified by sweet, loving, pure remembrances, when life was an open door, and pulses beat with hope, and the sun was over all. Mr. Holwood wiped his brow, and let himself down on the stone. 'Merciful Olympian powers,' said he in a low tone to himself. 'It was here――here it all began.' He set his hat with curved brim on the pebbles at his feet. He looked for the little pool――but it was gone, filled with rounded stones. He rested his head between his palms, and his long white fingers played a tattoo on his temples. At that moment the past was intensely vivid. A barbed past can never be cut out of the memory; it leaves behind its fangs, its canker. It may be covered over, and forgotten, but it reasserts itself inevitably, excruciatingly, and the fester begins to ooze forth and the wound to gape. It was so now. On this piece of chalk he had put his arm round Jane's waist and spoken his love into her ear. There where now lay pebbles and a ribbon of torn weed, there in a crystal pool he had seen her frightened face reflected――and into it her tears had fallen. In all this there was naught to sting and stab. But he recalled something further. It was here, on this same shelf of chalk, that he had sworn――when she confided to him that she would be a mother――that he would stand by herself and her child through life, and he had taken the oath with the deliberate intent of breaking it. This was the story. When Joseph Holwood had passed his final examination at Oxford, he had come to Lyme Regis for a change of scene and air. His family possessed some influence, and it was an assured thing that he should have a situation in one of the Government offices. He enjoyed a small income of his own, not sufficient to maintain him in luxury, but this, added to a salary derived from his appointment, would make his position easy. Till he received his nomination――he was promised one in the Foreign Office――he resolved to recruit after his studies, amuse himself at Lyme, boat, fish, bathe, and think of nothing.