th seemed to have
shone out of the man. Step by step he had thought out subtly and with
infinite care every small detail of his life. It was he who had elected
to live those three months in absolute seclusion. It was he, indirectly,
who had arranged that many more photographs of Douglas Romilly, the
English shoe manufacturer, should appear in the newspapers. One moment's
horror he had certainly had. He could see the little paragraph now,
almost lost in the shoals of more important news:

GHASTLY DISCOVERY IN A DERBYSHIRE CANAL

Yesterday the police recovered the body of a man
who had apparently been dead for some weeks, from
a canal close to Detton Magna. The body was
unrecognisable but it is believed that the remains
are those of Mr. Philip Romilly, the missing art
teacher from London, who is alleged to have
committed suicide in January last.

The thought of that gruesome find scarcely blanched his cheeks. His
nerves now were stronger and tenser things. He crushed back those
memories with all the strength of his will. Whatever might lie behind, he
had struck for the future which he meant to live and enjoy. They were
only weaklings who brooded over an unalterable past. It was for the
present and the near future that he lived, and both, in that moment, were
more alluring than ever before. Even his intellectual powers seemed to
have developed in his new-found happiness. The play which he had written,
every line of which appeared to gain in vital and literary force towards
its conclusion, was only the first of his children. Already other images
and ideas were flowing into his brain. The power of creation was
triumphantly throwing out its tendrils. He was filled with an amazing and
almost inspired confidence. He was ready to start upon fresh work that
hour, to-morrow, or when he chose. And before him now was the prospect of
stimulating companionship. Elizabeth and he had decided that the time had
come for him to take his fate into his hands. He was to be introduced to
the magnates of the dramatic profession, to become a clubman in the
world's most hospitable city, to mix freely in the circles where he would
find himself in constant association with the keenest brains and most
brilliant men of letters in the world. He was safe. They had both decided
it.

He walked to the mirror and looked at himself. The nervous,
highly-strung, half-starved, neurotic stripling had become the perfectly
assured, well-mann