child's
fresh spring of emotion, and he had no more than a child's strength to
struggle against it. He hurried from the inn, suppressing his sobs for
a moment with one grand effort.

He walked back to the town and found an expected letter from Helen
awaiting him at the post-office. He had asked for ten pounds, and she
had sent him a bank-note. She had written him only just a few lines to
accompany it, but promised to make amends as regards length next time.
She said he had made her happy by giving her so practical a proof of
his belief in her friendship, and added she was very glad indeed he
was thinking of lodging elsewhere, instead of staying with that horrid
and amusing family. She hoped he would make up his mind on the point
very soon; and the sooner he had a terrific quarrel with his Cleo the
better. As soon as she should hear of it she would execute a
war-dance, adequately complicated for the occasion.

How good to him were those he had fled from! How endless was the
morass into which he had floundered!

And yet the very touch of the bank-note stung him. It represented the
fact of his degradation; it summed up the hopelessness of his
position. The sympathy poured upon him, welcome though it was, but
emphasised his sense of the pitiable failure of his existence. He
still burned under the terrible insult of the morning; he smarted from
the friction of living amid the petty, squabbling vulgarity of the
Kettering household. He remembered, too, he must come to some
understanding with Cleo; he must give her an opportunity of joining
him wherever he should be staying. And, of course, he must also write
to thank Mr. and Mrs. Kettering for their hospitality.

The afternoon passed by. He dined modestly at a sort of coffee-house
at the back of the harbour and arranged for a bed-room there. Later in
the evening he found himself forced to go out again, for it suffocated
him to stay within four walls. And even as he walked at random, the
blackest fit of his life came upon him. He thought of those first
years of enthusiastic striving, and those following years of
half-hearted striving; he thought of the long stretches of time
dissipated in mental lounging, in lethargic inaction he had been
unable to combat, so paralysing had been his sense of the futility of
effort. Looking back now, his whole inner life seemed to have been a
long, increasing bitterness. But he did not pity himself; his attitude
was one of cruel self-critic