fiable extravagance. Then Miss
Peasey herself was getting L18 a year. It seemed very little--so little,
indeed, that when he paid her every month he felt inclined to apologize
for the smallness of the amount, but little as it was it only left him
with L132. Knock off L30 for meat and he had L102; L18 must go in rent,
and there was left L84. Then there was milk and bread and taxes and the
subscription to the cricket-club and the subscription to all the other
vice-presidencies to which the town had elected him. There was also
Graves, his deaf-and-dumb gardener, and a new bucket for the well. Books
and clothes, of course, could be obtained on credit, but even so some
time or other bills came in. Guy made a number of mental calculations,
but by no device was he able to make the amount required come to less
than L82. That left L2 for Pauline, and then, by the way, there was the
dog-license which he had forgotten. Thirty-two and sixpence for Pauline!
Guy roamed through the sad arbors of Wychford Abbey in the depths of
depression, and watched with a cynical amusement the birds searching for
grubs in the iron ground. He began to feel a positive sense of injury
against love which had descended with proverbial wantonness to
complicate mortal affairs. He tried to imagine the Rectory without
Pauline, and when he did so all the attraction was gone. Yet distinctly
when he had first met the Greys he had not thought more often of Pauline
than of her sisters. What perversity of circumstance had introduced
love?

"It's being alone," said Guy. "I feed myself upon dreams. Michael was
perfectly right. Wychford is a place of dreams."

He would cure this love-sickness. That was an idea for a sonnet. Damn!
"_I attempt from love's sickness to fly._" It need not be said again. At
the same time, poem or not, he would avoid the Rectory and shut himself
close in that green room which Margaret and Monica had thought so crude
with undergraduate taste. If this cold went on, there would be skating;
and he began to picture Pauline upon the ice. The vision flashed like a
diamond through these gloomy groves, and with the soughing of the skates
in his ears and the thought of Pauline's hands crisscross in his own,
Guy's first attack on love ended in complete surrender. Skating meant
long talks with never a curious eye to cast dismay; and in long talks
and rhythmic motion possibly she might come to love him. Guy's footsteps
began to ring out upon the iron-b