sed some
facility, he decided that he was a poet, and at once started an epic
poem in rhyme on the Life of Nelson, the material being supplied by
Southey. This morning he did the Battle of the Baltic.

He put the glass to his blind eye,
And said "No signals do I spy,"

wrote Paul. Poetry taken at the gallop like this was a very simple
affair, and Paul covered an amazing amount of ground.

In the afternoon he walked abroad with Jane, who, having lengthened her
skirts and put up her hair, was now a young woman looking older than
her years. She too had developed. Her lank figure had rounded into
pretty curves. Her sharp little Cockney face had filled out. She had a
pleasant smile and a capable brow, and, correcting a tendency to
fluffiness of hair of which she disapproved, and dressing herself
neatly, made herself by no means unattractive. Constant association
with Paul had fired her ambitions. Like him, she might have a destiny,
though not such a majestic one, Accordingly she had studied stenography
and typewriting, with a view to earning her livelihood away from the
little shop, which did not offer the prospect of a dazzling career. At
the back of her girlish mind was the desire to keep pace with Paul in
his upward flight, so that he should not be ashamed of her when he sat
upon the clouds in glory. In awful secrecy she practised the social
accomplishments which Paul brought home. She loved her Saturday and
Sunday excursions with Paul--of late they had gone far afield: the
Tower, Greenwich, Ricmond--exploring London and making splendid
discoveries such as Westminster Abbey and a fourpenny tea garden at
Putney. She scarcely knew whether she cared for these things for
themselves; but she saw them through Paul coloured by his vivid
personality. Once on Chelsea Bridge he had pointed out a peculiarly
ugly stretch of low-tide mud, and said: "Look at that." She, by
unprecedented chance, mistaking his tone, had replied: "How lovely!"
And she had thought it lovely, until his stare of rebuke and wonderment
brought disillusion and spurting tears, which for the life of him he
could not understand. It is very foolish, and often suicidal, of men to
correct women for going into rapture over mud flats. On that occasion,
however, the only resultant harm was the conviction in the girl's heart
that the presence of Paul turned mud flats into beds of asphodel. Then,
just as she saw outer things through his eyes, she felt herself
rega