fiths'
self-sacrifice lost nothing.

"You can't help liking him," said Philip.

"I don't like good-looking men," said Mildred. "They're too conceited for
me."

"He wants to know you. I've talked to him about you an awful lot."

"What have you said?" asked Mildred.

Philip had no one but Griffiths to talk to of his love for Mildred, and
little by little had told him the whole story of his connection with her.
He described her to him fifty times. He dwelt amorously on every detail of
her appearance, and Griffiths knew exactly how her thin hands were shaped
and how white her face was, and he laughed at Philip when he talked of the
charm of her pale, thin lips.

"By Jove, I'm glad I don't take things so badly as that," he said. "Life
wouldn't be worth living."

Philip smiled. Griffiths did not know the delight of being so madly in
love that it was like meat and wine and the air one breathed and whatever
else was essential to existence. Griffiths knew that Philip had looked
after the girl while she was having her baby and was now going away with
her.

"Well, I must say you've deserved to get something," he remarked. "It must
have cost you a pretty penny. It's lucky you can afford it."

"I can't," said Philip. "But what do I care!"

Since it was early for luncheon, Philip and Mildred sat in one of the
shelters on the parade, sunning themselves, and watched the people pass.
There were the Brighton shop-boys who walked in twos and threes, swinging
their canes, and there were the Brighton shop-girls who tripped along in
giggling bunches. They could tell the people who had come down from London
for the day; the keen air gave a fillip to their weariness. There were
many Jews, stout ladies in tight satin dresses and diamonds, little
corpulent men with a gesticulative manner. There were middle-aged
gentlemen spending a week-end in one of the large hotels, carefully
dressed; and they walked industriously after too substantial a breakfast
to give themselves an appetite for too substantial a luncheon: they
exchanged the time of day with friends and talked of Dr. Brighton or
London-by-the-Sea. Here and there a well-known actor passed, elaborately
unconscious of the attention he excited: sometimes he wore patent leather
boots, a coat with an astrakhan collar, and carried a silver-knobbed
stick; and sometimes, looking as though he had come from a day's shooting,
he strolled in knickerbockers, and ulster of Harris tweed, and a