aged very simply. Acting on Mrs. Damerel's
counsel he insured his life, and straightaway used the policy as
security for a loan of five hundred pounds from a friend of Mrs.
Damerel's. The insurance itself was not effected without a disagreeable
little episode. As a result of the medical examination, Horace learnt,
greatly to his surprise, that he would have to pay a premium somewhat
higher than the ordinary. Unpleasant questions were asked: Was he quite
sure that he knew of no case of consumption in his family? Quite sure,
he answered stoutly, and sincerely. Why? Did the doctor think _him_
consumptive? Oh dear no, but--a slight constitutional weakness. In fine,
the higher premium must be exacted. He paid it with the indifference of
his years, but said nothing to Mrs. Damerel.

And thereupon began the sowing of wild oats. At two-and-twenty, after
domestic restraint and occupations that he detested, he was let loose
upon life. Five hundred pounds seemed to him practically inexhaustible.
He did not wish to indulge in great extravagance; merely to see and to
taste the world.

Ah, the rapture of those first nights, when he revelled amid the tumult
of London, pursuing joy with a pocket full of sovereigns! Theatres,
music-halls, restaurants and public-houses--he had seen so little of
these things, that they excited him as they do a lad fresh from the
country. He drew the line nowhere. Love of a worthy woman tells for
chastity even in the young and the sensual; love of a Fanny French
merely debauches the mind and inflames the passions. Secure in his
paganism, Horace followed where the lures of London beckoned him; he
knew not reproach of conscience; shame offered but thin resistance to
his boiling blood. By a miracle he had as yet escaped worse damage to
health than a severe cold, caught one night after heroic drinking. That
laid him by the heels for a time, and the cough still clung to him.

In less than two years he would command seven thousand pounds, and a
share in the business now conducted by Samuel Barmby. What need to stint
himself whilst he felt able to enjoy life? If Fanny deceived him, were
there not, after all, other and better Fannys to be won by his money?
For it was a result of this girl's worthlessness that Horace, in most
things so ingenuous, had come to regard women with unconscious cynicism.
He did not think he could be loved for his own sake, but he believed
that, at any time, the show of love, perhaps its