ever shall! I've done with
exams." He meant it.

"But--shall you give up architecture, then?"

"Certainly not! My dear girl, what are you thinking of? Of course I
shan't give up architecture. But you needn't pass any exams, to be an
architect. Anybody can call himself an architect, and be an architect,
without passing exams. Exams. are optional. That's what makes old
Enwright so cross with our beautiful profession."

He laughed again harshly. All the time, beneath his quite genuine
defiance, he was thinking what an idiot he had been to cheek the
examiner, and how staggeringly simple it was to ruin years of industry
by one impulsive moment's folly, and how iniquitous was a world in which
such injustice could be.

Marguerite was puzzled. In her ignorance she had imagined that
professions were inseparably connected with examinations. However, she
had to find faith to accept his dictum, and she found it.

"Now about this afternoon," he said. "I vote we take a steamboat down
the river. I've made up my mind I must have a look at Greenwich again
from the water. And we both need a blow."

"But won't it take a long time?" she mildly objected.

He turned on her violently, and spoke as he had never spoken:

"What if it does?"

He knew that she was thinking of her infernal father, and he would not
have it. He remembered all that Agg had said. Assuredly Agg had shown
nerve, too much nerve, to tackle him in the way she did, and the more he
reflected upon Agg's interference the more he resented it as
impertinent. Still, Agg had happened to talk sense.

"Oh, nothing!" Marguerite agreed quickly, fearfully. "I should like to
go. I've never been. Do we go to Chelsea Pier? Down Fernshaw Road will
be the nearest."

"We'll go down Beaufort Street," he decided. He divined that she had
suggested Fernshaw Road in order to avoid passing the end of the Grove,
where her father might conceivably see them. Well, he was not going out
of his way to avoid her father. Nay, he was going slightly out of his
way in order to give her father every chance of beholding them
together.

Although the day was Saturday there was no stir on Chelsea Pier. The
pier-keeper, indeed, was alone on the pier, which rose high on the
urgent flood-tide, so that the gangway to it sloped unusually upwards.
No steamer was in sight, and it seemed impossible that any steamer
should ever call at that forlorn and decrepit platform that trembled
under the straining of