worse case than that of Mr. Stone! And to Stephen there
was something awful in this thought.

The first small bird of morning, close to the open window, uttered a
feeble chirrup. Into Stephen's mind there leaped without reason
recollection of the morning after his first term at school, when,
awakened by the birds, he had started up and fished out from under his
pillow his catapult and the box of shot he had brought home and taken to
sleep with him. He seemed to see again those leaden shot with their
bluish sheen, and to feel them, round, and soft, and heavy, rolling about
his palm. He seemed to hear Hilary's surprised voice saying: "Hallo,
Stevie! you awake?"

No one had ever had a better brother than old Hilary. His only fault was
that he had always been too kind. It was his kindness that had done for
him, and made his married life a failure. He had never asserted himself
enough with that woman, his wife. Stephen turned over on his other side.
'All this confounded business,' he thought, 'comes from
over-sympathising. That's what's the matter with Thyme, too.' Long he
lay thus, while the light grew stronger, listening to Cecilia's gentle
breathing, disturbed to his very marrow by these thoughts.

The first post brought no letter from Thyme, and the announcement soon
after, that Mr. Hilary had come to breakfast, was received by both
Stephen and Cecilia with a welcome such as the anxious give to anything
which shows promise of distracting them.

Stephen made haste down. Hilary, with a very grave and harassed face,
was in the dining-room. It was he, however, who, after one look at
Stephen, said:

"What's the matter, Stevie?"

Stephen took up the Standard. In spite of his self-control, his hand
shook a little.

"It's a ridiculous business," he said. "That precious young Sanitist has
so worked his confounded theories into Thyme that she has gone off to the
Euston Road to put them into practice, of all things!"

At the half-concerned amusement on Hilary's face his quick and rather
narrow eyes glinted.

"It's not exactly for you to laugh, Hilary," he said. "It's all of a
piece with your cursed sentimentality about those Hughs, and that girl.
I knew it would end in a mess."

Hilary answered this unjust and unexpected outburst by a look, and
Stephen, with the strange feeling of inferiority which would come to him
in Hilary's presence against his better judgment, lowered his own glance.

"My dear boy