cot--the white bed, with his vacant place. A pang of longing--of
homesickness--stirred him.

Then he began to pace his room, driven by the stress of feeling to
take stock of his whole position. He had reached London in May; it was
now November. Six months--of the hardest effort, the most strenuous
labour he had ever passed through. He looked back upon it with
exultation. Never had he been so conscious of expanding power and
justified ambition. Through the Berners Street life-school he had
obtained some valuable coaching and advice which had corrected faults
and put him on the track of new methods. But it was his own right
hand and his own brain he had mostly to thank, together with the
opportunities of London. Up early, and to bed late--drawing from the
model, the antique, still life, drapery, landscape; studying pictures,
old and new, and filling his sketch-book in every moment of so-called
leisure with the figures and actions of the great city--he had made
magnificent use of his time; Phoebe could find no fault with him
there.

Had he forgotten her and the babe?--found letters to her sometimes a
burden, and his heart towards her dry often and barren? Well, he _had_
written regularly; and she had never complained. Men cannot be like
women, absorbed for ever in the personal affections. For him it was
the day of battle, in which a man must strain all his powers to the
uttermost if any laurels are to be won before evening. His whole soul
was absorbed in the stress of it, in the hungry eagerness for fame,
and--though in a lesser degree--for money.

Money! The very thought of it filled him with impatient worry.
Morrison's hundred was nearly gone. He knew well enough that Phoebe
was right when she accused him of managing his money badly. It ran
through his fingers loosely, incessantly. He hardly knew now where the
next remittances to Phoebe were to come from. At first he had done
a certain amount of illustrating work and had generally sent her the
proceeds of it. But of late he had been absorbed in his big picture,
and there had been few or no small earnings. Perhaps, if he hadn't
written those articles to the _Mirror_, there would have been time for
some? Well, why shouldn't he write them? His irritable pride took fire
at once at the thought of blame.

No one could say, anyway, that he had spent money in amusement. Why,
he had scarcely been out of Bloomsbury!--the rest of London might not
have existed for him. A gall