me furious. What business has she with love, at her
age? What business have they with each other?

He told me presently that she had started off for home, and drove me to
the ferry, behind an old grey pony. On the way he came back to his offer
of the other day.

"Come with me," he said. "It doesn't do to neglect the Press; you can
see the possibilities. It's one of the few countries left. If I once
get this business started you don't know where it's going to stop. You'd
have free passage everywhere, and whatever you like in reason."

I answered as rudely as I could--but by no means as rudely as I
wanted--that his scheme was mad. As a matter of fact, it's much too sane
for me; for, whatever the body of a scheme, its soul is the fibre of the
schemer.

"Think of it," he urged, as if he could see into me. "You can make what
you like of it. Press paragraphs, of course. But that's mechanical;
why, even I could do it, if I had time. As for the rest, you'll be as
free--as free as a man."

There, in five words of one syllable, is the kernel of this fellow
Pearse--"As free as a man!" No rule, no law, not even the mysterious
shackles that bind men to their own self-respects! "As free as a man!"
No ideals; no principles; no fixed star for his worship; no coil he
can't slide out of! But the fellow has the tenacity of one of the old
Devon mastiffs, too. He wouldn't take "No" for an answer.

"Think of it," he said; "any day will do--I've got a fortnight....
Look! there she is!" I thought that he meant Pasiance; but it was an
old steamer, sluggish and black in the blazing sun of mid-stream, with a
yellow-and-white funnel, and no sign of life on her decks.

"That's her--the Pied Witch! Do her twelve knots; you wouldn't think
it! Well! good-evening! You'd better come. A word to me at any time. I'm
going aboard now."

As I was being ferried across I saw him lolling in the stern-sheets of a
little boat, the sun crowning his straw hat with glory.

I came on Pasiance, about a mile up the road, sitting in the hedge.
We walked on together between the banks--Devonshire banks, as high
as houses, thick with ivy and ferns, bramble and hazel boughs, and
honeysuckle.

"Do you believe in a God?" she said suddenly.

"Grandfather's God is simply awful. When I'm playing the fiddle, I can
feel God; but grandfather's is such a stuffy God--you know what I mean:
the sea, the wind, the trees, colours too--they make one feel. But I
don't believ