r the absence of a loved one could
make or mar the colour-medley of a sunset or the beauty of a tree
against the sky.

One thing was certain: he gloried in possession. All his loneliness
was forgotten now and, as he paced the streets, he could look upon the
other couples without the pang of jealousy that once had stung him.
There would be no more glances thrown furtively at passing women, no
turning of an eager eye for bygone faces, no more emptiness and
yearning. Deep magic lay in the thought that Freda, with her smile,
and her quick mind, and her infinite grace of movement, was his to
possess, to own. He was not ashamed to glory in these proprietary
relations nor was she ashamed to accept them. She even welcomed them,
yielding to Martin with an utter abandonment of self. She wanted only
to be his, to be his loved possession, to help him and to share humbly
in his triumphs and successes.

One night indeed he repented, not of his love, but of his manner of
love. He felt the indignity of ownership.

They had gone, in a fit of intellectual enthusiasm, to see a play
called _Drift_. At a small outlying theatre two young men of ideas
were completing the noble task of self-imposed bankruptcy by giving the
British public a season of "good drama." And the public naturally
helped on the work by the easy method of staying away. The house was
barely half full when, after the hammerings customary in these circles,
the curtain went up.

_Drift_, a play in four acts by Villiers Wentworth, turned out to be a
fair specimen of that now antiquated genre, The New Drama. It had the
monosyllabic title, the insistent realism, the contempt for form and
dramatic convention, the arid conversation with lapses of brilliance,
the admirable acting, and, above all, the Great Gloom. It was
naturally a play with a point, showing, justly and forcibly, the
hopeless inadequacy of modern life to provide the average man and woman
with anything like a Unity of Interest. The characters drifted from
home which they dreaded to work which they loathed and in the evening
they made the return journey. Nothing held their lives together,
nothing remained as a permanent, unifying interest. There was love,
but, as Mr Villiers Wentworth pointed out, the young man is barred
socially and economically from indulging in anything but
hole-and-corner affairs just when he most needs real sympathy.

"Not a good play," said Martin as they walked out into th