er baby in her room, and sobbed until she was quieted by sheer
exhaustion.

But there was on her face next day a look of peace and quietude which
Lettice had never seen before. She said not a word about her interview,
and Lettice never knew what had passed between her brother and the woman
whom he had wronged. But she thought sometimes, in after years, that the
extreme of self-abasement in man or woman may prove, to natures not
radically bad or hopelessly weak, a turning-point from which to date
their best and most persistent efforts.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

"COURAGE!"

The reawakening of Alan's mind to old tastes and old pursuits, though
fitful in the first instance, soon developed into a steady appetite for
work. Much of his former freshness and elasticity returned; ideas and
forms of expression recurred to him without trouble. He had seized on a
dramatic theme suggested in one of the books which Lettice had been
reading, and a few days later admitted to her that he was at work on a
poetic drama. She clapped her hands in almost childlike glee at the
news, and Alan, without much need for pressing, read to her a whole
scene which had passed from the phase of thought into written words.

Lettice had already occupied her mornings in writing the story which she
had promised to Mr. MacAlpine. Fortunately for her, she now found little
difficulty in taking up the threads of the romance which she had begun
at Florence. The change of feeling and circumstance which had taken
place in her own heart she transferred, with due reservation and
appropriate coloring, to the characters in her story, which thus became
as real to her in the London fog as it had been under the fleckless
Tuscan sky.

So long as Alan was out of health and listless, it was not easy for her
to apply herself to this regular morning work. But now that he was fast
recovering his spirit and energy, and was busy with work of his own, she
could settle down to her writing with a quiet mind.

Alan had not accepted the hospitality of Lettice without concern or
protest, and, of course, he had no idea of letting her be at the expense
of finding food and house-rent for him.

"Why do you not bring me the weekly bills?" he said, with masculine
bluntness, after he had been at Chiswick for nearly three weeks.

She looked at him with a pained expression, and did not answer.

"You don't think that I can live on you in this cool way much longer?
You are vexed with