e collection already enriched by Ellie Vanderlyn's
sapphires; more recently, she would have resented the offer as an insult
to her newly-found principles. But already the mere fact that she
might henceforth, if she chose, be utterly out of reach of such bribes,
enabled her to look down on them with tolerance. Oh, the blessed moral
freedom that wealth conferred! She recalled Mrs. Fulmer's uncontrollable
cry: "The most wonderful thing of all is not having to contrive and
skimp, and give up something every single minute!" Yes; it was only on
such terms that one could call one's soul one's own. The sense of it
gave Susy the grace to answer amicably: "If I could possibly help you
out, Violet, I shouldn't want a present to persuade me. And, as you say,
there's no reason why I should sacrifice myself to Ursula--or to anybody
else. Only, as it happens"--she paused and took the plunge--"I'm going
to England because I've promised to see a friend." That night she wrote
to Strefford.

XVI

STRETCHED out under an awning on the deck of the Ibis, Nick Lansing
looked up for a moment at the vanishing cliffs of Malta and then plunged
again into his book.

He had had nearly three weeks of drug-taking on the Ibis. The drugs he
had absorbed were of two kinds: visions of fleeing landscapes, looming
up from the blue sea to vanish into it again, and visions of study
absorbed from the volumes piled up day and night at his elbow. For the
first time in months he was in reach of a real library, just the kind
of scholarly yet miscellaneous library, that his restless and impatient
spirit craved. He was aware that the books he read, like the fugitive
scenes on which he gazed, were merely a form of anesthetic: he swallowed
them with the careless greed of the sufferer who seeks only to still
pain and deaden memory. But they were beginning to produce in him a
moral languor that was not disagreeable, that, indeed, compared with the
fierce pain of the first days, was almost pleasurable. It was exactly
the kind of drug that he needed.

There is probably no point on which the average man has more definite
views than on the uselessness of writing a letter that is hard to write.
In the line he had sent to Susy from Genoa Nick had told her that she
would hear from him again in a few days; but when the few days had
passed, and he began to consider setting himself to the task, he found
fifty reasons for postponing it.

Had there been any practical ques