, but
best in the long run. I know. You weren't suited for her."

He laughed shakily as he sat down.

"I've had such a lark with some girls in a pub," he said.

His mother looked at him. He had forgotten Miriam now. He told her
about the girls in the Willow Tree. Mrs. Morel looked at him. It seemed
unreal, his gaiety. At the back of it was too much horror and misery.

"Now have some supper," she said very gently.

Afterwards he said wistfully:

"She never thought she'd have me, mother, not from the first, and so
she's not disappointed."

"I'm afraid," said his mother, "she doesn't give up hopes of you yet."

"No," he said, "perhaps not."

"You'll find it's better to have done," she said.

"I don't know," he said desperately.

"Well, leave her alone," replied his mother. So he left her, and she was
alone. Very few people cared for her, and she for very few people. She
remained alone with herself, waiting.

CHAPTER XII

PASSION

HE was gradually making it possible to earn a livelihood by his art.
Liberty's had taken several of his painted designs on various stuffs,
and he could sell designs for embroideries, for altar-cloths, and
similar things, in one or two places. It was not very much he made
at present, but he might extend it. He had also made friends with the
designer for a pottery firm, and was gaining some knowledge of his new
acquaintance's art. The applied arts interested him very much. At the
same time he laboured slowly at his pictures. He loved to paint large
figures, full of light, but not merely made up of lights and cast
shadows, like the impressionists; rather definite figures that had a
certain luminous quality, like some of Michael Angelo's people. And
these he fitted into a landscape, in what he thought true proportion.
He worked a great deal from memory, using everybody he knew. He believed
firmly in his work, that it was good and valuable. In spite of fits of
depression, shrinking, everything, he believed in his work.

He was twenty-four when he said his first confident thing to his mother.

"Mother," he said, "I s'll make a painter that they'll attend to."

She sniffed in her quaint fashion. It was like a half-pleased shrug of
the shoulders.

"Very well, my boy, we'll see," she said.

"You shall see, my pigeon! You see if you're not swanky one of these
days!"

"I'm quite content, my boy," she smiled.

"But you'll have to alter. Look at you with Minnie!"

Minnie was th