of that kind at unusual moments.

"Oh!" she laughed. "You can look! _I'm_ not worrying. I've no patience
with worrying."

Later in the afternoon he went out; rather like a person who has reasons
for leaving inconspicuously. He had made a great, a critical resolve. He
passed furtively down Werter Road into the High Street, and then stood a
moment outside Stawley's stationery shop, which is also a library, an
emporium of leather-bags, and an artists'-colourman's. He entered
Stawley's blushing, trembling--he a man of fifty who could not see his
own toes--and asked for certain tubes of colour. An energetic young lady
who seemed to know all about the graphic arts endeavoured to sell to him
a magnificent and complicated box of paints, which opened out into an
easel and a stool, and contained a palette of a shape preferred by the
late Edwin Long, R.A., a selection of colours which had been approved by
the late Lord Leighton, P.R.A., and a patent drying-oil which (she said)
had been used by Whistler. Priam Farll got away from the shop without
this apparatus for the confection of masterpieces, but he did not get
away without a sketching-box which he had had no intention of buying.
The young lady was too energetic for him. He was afraid of being too
curt with her lest she should turn on him and tell him that pretence was
useless--she knew he was Priam Farll. He felt guilty, and he felt that
he looked guilty. As he hurried along the High Street towards the river
with the paint-box it appeared to him that policemen observed him
inimically and cocked their helmets at him, as who should say: "See
here; this won't do. You're supposed to be in Westminster Abbey. You'll
be locked up if you're too brazen."

The tide was out. He sneaked down to the gravelly shore a little above