of the
arm to reach them. There was small disturbance by people passing, here
some two miles up the shore eastward from Hastings. A large shawl
spread between two walking-sticks stuck upright gave, at this afternoon
hour, all the shade needful for two persons lying side by side, and,
even in the blaze of unclouded summer, there were pleasant airs
flitting about the edge of the laughing sea. "Why shouldn't life be
always like this? It might be--sunshine or fireside--if men were wise.
Leisure is the one thing that all desire, but they strive for it so
blindly that they frustrate one another's hope. And so at length they
have come to lose the end in the means; are mad enough to set the means
before them as in itself an end."

"We must work to forget our troubles," said his companion simply.

"Why, yes, and those very troubles are the fit reward of our folly. We
have not been content to live in the simple happiness of our senses. We
must be learned and wise, forsooth. We were not content to enjoy the
beauty of the greater and the lesser light. We must understand whence
they come and whither they go--after that, what they are made of and
how much they weigh. We thought for such a long time that our toil
would end in something; that we might become as gods, knowing good and
evil. Now we are at the end of our tether, we see clearly enough that
it has all been worse than vain; how good if we could unlearn it all,
scatter the building of phantasmal knowledge in which we dwell so
uncomfortably! It is too late. The gods never take back their gifts; we
wearied them with our prayers into granting us this one, and now they
sit in the clouds and mock us."

Ida looked, and kept silent; perhaps scarcely understood.

"People kill themselves in despair," Waymark went on, "that is, when
they have drunk to the very dregs the cup of life's bitterness. If they
were wise, they would die at that moment--if it ever comes--when joy
seems supreme and stable. Life can give nothing further, and it has no
more hellish misery than disillusion following upon delight."

"Did you ever seriously think of killing yourself?" Ida asked, gazing
at him closely.

"Yes. I have reached at times the point when I would not have moved a
muscle to escape death, and from that it is not far to suicide. But my
joy had never come, and it is hard to go away without that one
draught.--And you!"

"I went so far once as to buy poison. But neither had I tasted any
h