maternity--the same feeling she gave her child. He responded with
eagerness, feeling indeed that he had won his battle.

For she lay in his arms--weak--protesting no more. The note of
anguish, of deep, incalculable foreboding, which she had shown, passed
away from her manner and words; while on his side he began to draw
pictures of the future so full of exultation and of hope that
her youth presently could but listen and believe. The sickle moon
descended behind the pikes; only the stars glimmered on the great side
of the fell, on solitary yews black upon the night, on lines of wall,
on dim, mysterious paths, old as the hills themselves, on the softly
chiding water. The May night breathed upon them, calmed them, brought
out the better self of each. They returned to the cottage like
children, hand in hand, talking of a hundred practical details,
thankful that the jarring moment had passed away, each refraining from
any word that could wound the other. Nor was it till Fenwick was sound
asleep beside her that Phoebe, replunged in loneliness and dread, gave
herself in the dawn-silence to a passion of unconquerable tears.

PART II

LONDON

'Was _that_ the landmark? What,--the foolish well Whose wave, low
down, I did not stoop to drink, But sat and flung the pebbles from
its brink In sport to send its imaged skies pell-mell, (And mine own
image, had I noted well!) Was that my point of turning? I had thought
The stations of my course should rise unsought, As altar-stone, or
ensigned citadel.'

CHAPTER III

'Why does that fellow upstairs always pass you as though he were in
a passion with somebody?' said Richard Watson, stepping back as he
spoke, palette on thumb, from the picture upon which he was engaged.
'He almost knocked me down this morning, and I am not conscious of
having done anything to offend his worship.'

His companion in the dingy Bloomsbury studio, where they were both at
work, also put down palette and brush, examining the canvas before him
with a keen, cheerful air.

'Perhaps he loathes mankind, as I did yesterday.'

'And to-day it's all right?'

'Well, come and look.'

Watson crossed over. He was a tall and splendid man, a 'black Celt'
from Merionethshire, with coal-black hair, and eyes deeply sunken and
lined, with fatigue or ill health. Beside him, his comrade, Philip
Cuningham, had the air of a shrewd clerk or man of business--with his
light alertness of frame, his reddish hair