have effected the change without the necessity of
explaining it, he would gladly have put those drawings out of sight.
Whenever, as now, he consciously regarded them, they plucked painfully
at his heart-strings, and threatened to make him a coward.

None of that! He had his work to do, happiness or no happiness, and by
all the virtue of manhood he would not fail in it--as far as success or
failure was a question of his own resolve.

The few books he owned were placed on hanging shelves; among them those
which he had purchased for Clara since their marriage. But reading was
as much a thing of the past as drawing. Never a moment when his mind
was sufficiently at ease to refresh itself with other men's thoughts or
fancies. As with John Hewett, so with himself; the circle of his
interests had shrivelled, until it included nothing but the cares of
his family, the cost of house and food and firing. As a younger man, he
had believed that he knew what was meant by the struggle for existence
in the nether world; it seemed to him now as if such knowledge had been
only theoretical. Oh, it was easy to preach a high ideal of existence
for the poor, as long as one had a considerable margin over the week's
expenses; easy to rebuke the men and women who tried to forget
themselves in beer-shops and gin-houses, as long as one could take up
some rational amusement with a quiet heart. Now, on his return home
from labour, it was all he could do not to sink in exhaustion and
defeat of spirit. Shillings and pence; shillings and pence--never a
question of pounds, unfortunately; and always too few of them. He
understood how men have gone mad under pressure of household cares; he
realised the horrible temptation which has made men turn dastardly from
the path leading homeward and leave those there to shift for themselves.

When on the point of lowering the lamp he heard someone coming
downstairs. The door opened, and, to his surprise, Clara came in.
Familiarity could not make him insensible to that disfigurement of her
once beautiful face; his eyes always fell before her at the first
moment of meeting.

'What are you doing?' she asked. 'Why don't you come up?'

'I was that minute coming.'

His hand went again to the lamp, but she checked him. In a low,
wailing, heart-breaking voice, and with a passionate gesture, she
exclaimed, 'Oh, I feel as if I should go mad I can't bear it much
longer!'

Sidney was silent at first, then said quietly,