rence, we'll thrash this matter out. You meant well,
no doubt, but--"

"Just so. I was sorry to interrupt, but it was all done for the best.
She's in the rose garden. She's crying!" volunteered Terence,
grinning.

"Is it your heart? _Is_ it your heart?" cried Delia clinging to his
arm. "Oh, Val, is your heart really affected?"

Lessing clasped her to him, laughing a big, glad laugh, full of the
joy and wonder of life.

"It is, darling!" he cried. "It is! _You_ have affected it. Oh,
Delia, Delia, let's be married, let's be married at once, and--keep a
chicken farm!"

CHAPTER NINE.

THE MAN WHO WISHED FOR SUCCESS.

Success was the passion of John Malham's life, mediocrity was his bane.
The ordinary commonplace life which brings happiness and content to
millions of his fellow men filled him with a passion of disgust. As he
left the Tube station morning and night, and filed out into the street
among the crowd of black-coated, middle-class workers, an insignificant
unit in an insignificant whole, a feeling of physical nausea overcame
him. There were grey-haired men by the hundred among the throng, men
not only elderly, but old, working ceaselessly day by day at the same
dull grind, returning at night to small houses in the suburbs. From
youth to age they had toiled and expended their strength, and this was
their reward! In a few years' time they would die, and be buried, and
the great machine would grind on, oblivious of their loss. Slaves,
puppets, automata who were content to masquerade in the guise of men!
John Malham squared his great shoulders and drew a deep breath of
contempt. Not for him this dull path of monotony. By one means or
another, he had vowed to his own heart to rise to the top of the tree,
and make for himself a place among men.

Malham was a barrister by profession; a barrister, without influence,
and with a private income of a hundred a year. His impressive
personality, and unmistakable gift of argument had brought him a
moderate success, but while others congratulated him, his own feeling
was an ever-mounting discontent. He was waiting for the grand
opportunity, and the grand opportunity did not come. Like an actor who
finds no scope for his talent in the puny parts committed to his charge,
but feels ever burning within him the capacity to shine as a star, so
did Malham fret and chafe; intolerantly waiting for his chance.

As an outlet for his ener