him dull. Perhaps it would have been better for him if they had, for
his impulsive nature had never been long content with a chilly
friendship. He was, as we may see, a man with a past, but it WAS a
past, now that Maude Selby had come like an angel of light across the
shadowed path of his life. In age he was nearly twenty-seven.

There are one or two things which might be said for him which he
would not have said for himself. He was an only child and an orphan,
but he had adopted his grandparents, who had been left penniless
through his father's death, and through all his struggles he had
managed to keep them happy and comfortable in a little cottage in
Worcestershire. Nor did he ever tell them that he had a struggle--
fearing lest it should make their position painful; and so when their
quarterly cheque arrived, they took it as a kindly but not remarkable
act of duty upon the part of their wealthy grandson in the City, with
no suspicion as to the difference which their allowance was making to
him. Nor did he himself look upon his action as a virtuous one, but
simply as a thing which must obviously be done. In the meantime, he
had stuck closely to his work, had won rapid promotion in the
Insurance Office in which he had started as junior clerk, had gained
the goodwill of his superiors through his frank, unaffected ways, and
had been asked to play for the second Surrey eleven at cricket. So
without going the length of saying that he was worthy of Maude Selby,
one might perhaps claim--if it could be done without endangering that
natural modesty which was one of his charms--that he was as worthy as
any other young man who was available.

That unfortunate artistic soul of his, which had been in the tropics
of expectation, and was now in the arctic of reaction, had just
finally settled down to black despair, with a grim recognition of the