His face clouded. "Well, maimed for life, then," he muttered.

Mrs. Peyton made no answer. She knew how much hung on the possibility of
his whining the competition which for weeks past had engrossed him. It was
a design for the new museum of sculpture, for which the city had recently
voted half a million. Dick's taste ran naturally to the grandiose, and the
erection of public buildings had always been the object of his ambition.
Here was an unmatched opportunity, and he knew that, in a competition of
the kind, the newest man had as much chance of success as the firm of most
established reputation, since every competitor entered on his own merits,
the designs being submitted to a jury of architects who voted on them
without knowing the names of the contestants. Dick, characteristically,
was not afraid of the older firms; indeed, as he had told his mother, Paul
Darrow was the only rival he feared. Mrs. Peyton knew that, to a certain
point, self-confidence was a good sign; but somehow her son's did not
strike her as being of the right substance--it seemed to have no dimension
but extent. Her fears were complicated by a suspicion that, under his
professional eagerness for success, lay the knowledge that Miss Verney's
favour hung on the victory. It was that, perhaps, which gave a feverish
touch to his ambition; and Mrs. Peyton, surveying the future from the
height of her material apprehensions, divined that the situation depended
mainly on the girl's view of it. She would have given a great deal to know
Clemence Verney's conception of success.


II

Miss Verney, when she presently appeared, in the wake of the impersonal
and exclamatory young married woman who served as a background to her
vivid outline, seemed competent to impart at short notice any information