ving,
it seems. What does he aim at next, I wonder?'

Earwaker cast meaning glances at his friend.

'I understand you,' said Godwin, at length. 'You mean that this merely
illustrates my own ambition. Well, you are right, I confess my
shame--and there's an end of it.'

He puffed at his cigar, resuming presently:

'But it would be untrue if I said that I regretted anything.
Constituted as I am, there was no other way of learning my real needs
and capabilities. Much in the past is hateful to me, but it all had its
use. There are men--why, take your own case. You look back on life, no
doubt, with calm and satisfaction.'

'Rather, with resignation.'

Godwin let his cigar fall, and laughed bitterly.

'Your resignation has kept pace with life. I was always a rebel. My
good qualities--I mean what I say--have always wrecked me. Now that I
haven't to fight with circumstances, they may possibly be made
subservient to my happiness.'

'But what form is your happiness to take?'

'Well, I am leaving England. On the Continent I shall make no fixed
abode, but live in the places where cosmopolitan people are to be met.
I shall make friends; with money at command, one may hope to succeed in
that. Hotels, boarding-houses, and so on, offer the opportunities. It
sounds oddly like the project of a swindler, doesn't it? There's the
curse I can't escape from! Though my desires are as pure as those of
any man living, I am compelled to express myself as if I were about to
do something base and underhand. Simply because I have never had a
social place. I am an individual merely; I belong to no class, town,
family, club'----'Cosmopolitan people,' mused Earwaker. 'Your ideal is
transformed.'

'As you know. Experience only could bring that about. I seek now only
the free, intellectual people--men who have done with the old
conceptions--women who'----

His voice grew husky, and he did not complete the sentence. 'I shall
find them in Paris, Rome.--Earwaker, think of my being able to speak
like this! No day-dreams, but actual sober plans, their execution to
begin in a day or two. Paris, Rome! And a month ago I was a hopeless
slave in a vile manufacturing town.--I wish it were possible for me to
pray for the soul of that poor dead woman. I don't speak to you of her;
but do you imagine I am brutally forgetful of her to whom I owe all
this?'

'I do you justice,' returned the other, quietly.

'I believe you can and do.'

'How grand it is