fix on the details she could best understand, those which put her
fears in palpable shape.

'I didn't say a big one, but a larger than this. We're not going to
play the do-nothing gentlefolk; but all the same our life won't and
can't be what it has been. There's no choice. You've worked hard all
your life, mother, and it's only fair you should come in for a bit
of rest. We'll find a house somewhere out Green Lanes way, or in
Highbury or Holloway.'

He laughed again.

'So there's the best of it--the worst of it, as you say. Just take a
night to turn it over. Most likely I shall go to Belwick again
to-morrow afternoon.'

He paused, and his mother, after bending her head to bite off an end
of cotton, asked--

'You'll tell Emma?'

'I shall go round to-night.'

A little later Richard left the house for this purpose. His step was
firmer than ever, his head more upright Walking along the crowded
streets, he saw nothing; there was a fixed smile on his lips, the
smile of a man to whom the world pays tribute. Never having suffered
actual want, and blessed with sanguine temperament, he knew nothing
of that fierce exultation, that wrathful triumph over fate, which
comes to men of passionate mood smitten by the lightning-flash of