one, and it appeared to him in its tawdry,
original vulgarity. He got on a horse and rode towards the downs, and
went up the steep ascents at a gallop. He stood amid the gorse at the
top and viewed the great girdle of blue encircling sea, and the long
string of coast towns lying below him, and far away. Lunch was on the
table when he returned. After lunch, harassed by an obsession of
architectural plans, he went out to sketch. But it rained, and resisting
his mother's invitation to change his clothes, he sat down before the
fire, damp without, and feverishly irritable within. He vacillated an
hour between his translation of St Fortunatus' hymn, _Quem terra, pontus
aethera_, and "Red as a Rose is She," which, although he thought it as
reprehensible for moral as for literary reasons, he was fain to follow
out to the vulgar end. But he could interest himself in neither hymn nor
novel. For the authenticity of the former he now cared not a jot, and he
threw the book aside vowing that its hoydenish heroine was unbearable
and he would read no more.

"I never knew a more horrible place to live in than Sussex. Either of
two things: I must alter the architecture of this house, or I must
return to Stanton College."

"Don't talk nonsense, do you think I don't know you? you are boring
yourself because Kitty is upstairs in bed, and cannot walk about with
you."

"I do not know how you contrive, mother, always to say the most
disagreeable possible things; the marvellous way in which you pick out
what will, at the moment, wound me most is truly wonderful. I compliment
you on your skill, but I confess I am at a loss to understand why you
should, as if by right, expect me to remain here to serve continuously
as a target for the arrows of your scorn."

John walked out of the room. During dinner mother and son spoke very
little, and he retired early, about ten o'clock, to his room. He was in
high dudgeon, but the white walls, the prie-dieu, the straight, narrow
bed were pleasant to see. His room was the first agreeable impression
of the day. He picked up a drawing from the table, it seemed to him
awkward and slovenly. He sharpened his pencil, cleared his crow-quill
pens, got out his tracing-paper, and sat down to execute a better. But
he had not finished his outline sketch before he leaned back in his
chair, and as if overcome by the insidious warmth of the fire, lapsed
into fire-light attitudes and meditations.

He looked a little ba