k about your going on with your work. I daresay it would
cheer you up to go out on the bay. I expect you find your work pretty
trying."

"It is very trying. I often feel completely exhausted at the end of
the day."

"Nerve strain," said Meldon. "I don't wonder. It's a marvel how you
stand it."

"Then I can't sleep," said Miss King. "Often I can't sleep for two or
three nights together."

"It surprises me to hear that you ever sleep at all. Don't they haunt
you? I've always heard--"

"My people?"

"Yes, your people, if that's what you call them. I'd have thought
they'd never have let you alone."

"Some of them do haunt me. I often cry when I think of them. It's
very foolish, of course; but in spite of myself I cry."

"Then why on earth do you go on with it?"

"It's my art," said Miss King.

"I'm not an artist myself," said Meldon, "in any sense of the word, so
I can't exactly enter into your feelings; but I should say, speaking as
a complete outsider, that the proper thing for you would be to drop the
whole thing, take to smoking a pipe instead of those horrid scented
cigarettes, drink a bottle of porter before you go to bed, and then
sleep sound."

Miss King sighed. There was something in the ideal which Meldon set
before her which was very attractive. The details she ignored.
Bottled porter was not a drink she cared for, and no woman, however
emancipated, likes a pipe. In spite of the satisfaction she found in
her literary success, there was in her a desire for quiet and restful
ways of life. There was no doubt that she would sleep sounder at night
if she lived simply, somewhere in the country, and forgot the
excitements of the novelist's art. Meldon, indeed, did not seem to
enjoy absolutely unbroken rest at night; but Miss King's imagination,
although she wrote improper novels, did not insist on representing a
baby as an inevitable part of domesticated life. She got no further
than the dream of a peaceful house, with the figure of an inoffensive
husband somewhere in the background.

CHAPTER III.

Meldon stretched himself in a deep chair and lit his pipe. He had
dined to his own satisfaction, eating with an appetite whetted by the
long drive from the railway station. He had before him a clear
fortnight's holiday, and intended to enjoy it to the full. Major
Kent's house was comfortable; his tobacco, which Meldon smoked, was
good; his yacht, the _Spindrift_, lay ready for a cr