apologetic tone, that the question had been waiting for utterance
throughout the evening, and that Sarah had lacked courage for it until
the kiss had enheartened her. And also she perceived that Sarah was
suspecting her of being somehow in conspiracy with George Cannon.

"Yes," said Sarah. "He's got into his head that Brighton's the only
place for this boarding-house business if it's to be properly done."

"He never said a word to me about Brighton," Hilda whispered positively.

"Oh!"

Hilda descended the stairs, groping. Brighton? What next?

CHAPTER III
AT BRIGHTON

I

She thought vividly, one afternoon about three months later, of that
final scrap of conversation. Just as she had sat opposite George Cannon
in a second-class compartment, so now she was sitting opposite Sarah
Gailey in a second-class compartment. The train, having passed Lewes,
was within a few minutes of Brighton. And following behind them,
somewhere at the tail of the train, were certain trunks containing all
that she possessed and all that Sarah Gailey possessed of personal
property--their sole chattels and paraphernalia on earth. George Cannon
had willed it and brought it about. He was to receive them on the
platform of Brighton Station. She had not seen very much of him in the
interval, for he had been continually on the move between Brighton and
Turnhill. "In a moment we shall all be together again," she reflected.
"This meeting also will happen, as everything else has happened, and a
new period will definitely have begun." And she sat and stared at the
closed eyes of the desiccated Sarah Gailey, and waited for the instant
of arrival apprehensively and as it were incredulously--not with fear,
not with pleasure, but with the foreboding of adventure and a curious
idea that the instant of arrival never would come.

For thirteen weeks, which had gone very quickly, she had devoted herself
to Sarah Gailey, acting as George Cannon's precursor, prophet, and
expounder. While the summer cooled into autumn, and the boarding-house
season slackened and once more feebly brightened, she had daily
conversed with Sarah about George's plans, making them palatable to her,
softening the shocks of them, and voluntarily promising not to quit her
until the crisis was past. She had had to discourse on the unique
advantages of Brighton as a field for George's enterprise, and on
George's common sense and on Sarah's common sense, and the
interdependence o