“There you go . . . tripping again. You keep one in a perfect fidget,” sighed Mary.

“It’s these confounded shoes. They’re at least two sizes too big.”

“I told you so! But you were so set on having them easy.”

Entering the surgery Mahony kicked the inoffensive slippers from his feet, and drew on his boots. After which, having opened the door by a crack, to peer and listen, he stole into the passage to fetch hat and stick.

But Mary, in process of clearing the breakfast-table, caught him in the act. “What? . . . going out already? I declare your consulting hours become more of a farce every day. Well, at least take the children with you.”

“No, that I can’t. They’re such a drag.”

And therewith he whipped out of the house and down the path, not slackening his pace till he had turned a corner: Mary was quite capable of coming after him and hauling him back. And escape he must — from the prison cell that was his room; from the laming surveillance to which she subjected him. Only out of doors, with the wind sweeping through him, the wild expanse of sea tossing in the sunlight, could he for a little forget what threatened; forget her dogging and hounding; enjoy a fictitious peace . . . dream of safety . . . forget — forget.

He made for the Bluff where, for an hour or more, he wandered to and fro: from the old grey lighthouse and flagstaff at one end, to pier and township at the other. He carried his hat in his hand, and the sea wind played with his fine, longish hair till it stood up like a halo of feathers round his head. That no chance passer-by should use them as spy-holes, he kept his eyes glued to the ground; but at the same time he talked to himself without pause; no longer mumbling and muttering as of old, but in a clear voice for any to hear, and stressing his words with forcible gestures: throwing out an open palm; thumping a closed fist in the air; silencing an imaginary listener with a contemptuous outward fling of the hand.

He was obliged to be energetic, for it was Mary he argued with, Mary he laboured to convince; and this could only be done by means of a tub-thumper’s over-emphasis. Where he was in question. She believed others readily enough. But he never had her wholly with him; invariably she kept back some thought or feeling; was very woman in her want of straightness and simplicity. Even here, while shouting her down with: “I tell you once for all that it IS so!” he felt that he was not moving her. — But stay! What was it he sought to convince her of? Confound the thing! it had slipped the leash and was gone again: grope as he might, standing stockstill the while in the middle of the path and glaring seawards, he could not recapture it. Not that this was anything new. Nowadays his mind seemed a mere receptacle for disjointed thoughts, which sprang into it from nowhere, skimmed across it and vanished . . . like birds of the air. Birds. Of Paradise. Parrakeets . . . their sumptuous green and blue and rosy plumage. You caught one, clasped it round, and, even as you held it, felt its soft shape elude you, the slender tail-feathers glide past till but the empty hole of your curled hand remained. A wonderful flight of parrakeets he had once seen at . . . at . . . now WHAT was the name of that place? — a Y and a K, and a Y. Damnation take it! this, too, had flown; and though he scoured and searched, working letter by letter through the alphabet: first the initial consonants, then the companion vowels.. . fitting them together — mnemonics — artificial memory . . . failing powers . . . proper names went first — gone, gone! . . . everything was gone now, lost in a blistering haze.

Such a frenzied racking of his poor old brain invariably ended thus . . . with a mind empty as a drum. And though he crouched, balled like a spider, ready to pounce on the meagrest image that shewed, nothing came: the very tension he was at held thought at bay. His senses on the other hand were strung to a morbid pitch; and little by little a clammy fear stole over him lest he should never again know connected thought; be condemned eternally to exist in this state of vacuity. Or the terror would shift, and resolve itself into an anticipation of what would, what MUST happen, to end the strain. For there was nothing final about it: the blood roared in his ears, his pulses thudded like a ship’s engines, the while he waited: for a roar fit to burst his eardrums; for the sky to topple and fall upon his head, with a crash like that of splitting beams. Thunder — thunder breaking amid high mountains . . . echoing and reechoing . . . rolling to and fro. Or oneself, with closed eyes and a cavernous mouth, emitting a scream: a mad and horrid scream that had nothing human left in it, and the uttering of which would change the face of things for ever. This might escape him at any moment; here and now: wind and sea were powerless against it — he could feel it swelling . . . mounting in his throat. He fought it down: gritted his teeth, balled his fists, his breath escaping him in hoarse, short jerks. Help, help! . . . for God’s sake, help!

And help approached . . . in the shape of a middle-aged woman who came trapesing along, dragging a small child by the hand.

Swaying round his stick, which he dug into the gravel for a support, Mahony blocked her way, blurting out incoherencies; in a panic lest she should pass on, abandon him. “Good morn’g, my good woman . . . good morn’g. A pleasant morn’g. Cool breeze. A nice lil girl you have there. A fine child. Know what I’m saying, speak from exp’rience . . . a father myself. Yes, yes, two little girls . . . golden curls, healthy, happy. Like criteks . . . chirking. A boy, too. Porridge for rickets . . . you’ve let yours walk too soon. Nothing like porridge for forming bone. The Highlanders . . . main sustenance . . . magnif’cent men. — Eh? What? Well, good day . . . good day!”

For, having edged round and past him, the woman grabbed her child and made off. Not till she had put a safe distance between them did she stop to look round. “Well, I’m blowed! Of all the rum ol’ cusses!” There he went, without a hat, his hair standing up anyhow, and talking away nineteen to the dozen. The whole time he’d spoke to her, too, he’d never so much as took his eyes off the ground.

In his wake Mahony left a trail of such open mouths. Espying a man digging a garden, he crossed the road to him and leaned over the fence. A painter was at work on the beach, re-painting a boat: he headed for him, wading ankle-deep through the loose, heavy sand.

Of these, the former spoke up sturdily. “Can’t say as I understand what you’re drivin’ at, mister, with them sissyfass stones you tork of. But this I do know: any one who likes can have MY job! An’ to-day rather’n to-morrow.”

The painter knew the “ol’ doctor” by sight and stopped his work to listen, not impolitely, to certain amazing confidences that were made him. After which, watching the departing figure, he thrust his fingers under his cap and vigorously scratched his head. “Crikey! So THAT’S him, is it? Well, they do say . . . and dang me! I b’lieve they’re not far wrong.”

Dog-tired, footsore, Mahony limped home, his devils exorcised for the time being. At the gate a little figure was on the watch for him — his youngest, his lovely one, towards whom his heart never failed to warm: her little-girl eyes had nothing of the boy’s harassing stare. Holding her to him he walked up the path. Then: “Good God! but I said I had two. What . . . what came over me? The creature will think I was lying . . . boasting!” Where should he find her to put things right? . . . by explaining that one of the two no longer wore bodily form; but had been snatched from them amid pain and distress, the memories of which, thus rudely awakened, he now — in the twenty odd yards that divided gate from door — re-lived to their last detail, and so acutely that he groaned aloud.

Hot with the old pity, he laid a tender hand on Mary’s shoulder; and following her into the dining-room ate, meekly and submissively, what she set before him: without querulous carping, or fastidious demands for the best bits on the dish. And this chastened mood holding, he even offered in the course of the afternoon to walk the children out for her.

Bidden to dress himself, Cuffy obeyed with the worst possible grace. It was dull enough walking with Mamma, who couldn’t tell stories because she was always thinking things; but when it came to going out with Papa . . . well, Mamma never did it herself, and so she didn’t know what it was like. But he couldn’t ask to be let stop at home, because of Luce. He HAD to be there to pertect Luce, who was so little and so fat. Mamma was always saying take care of her.

Papa held their hands and they started quite nice; but soon he forgot about them, and walked so quick that they nearly had to run to keep up, and could look at each other across behind him. And they went round by the bay at the back, where the mussels were, and heaps of mud, and no waves at all. Luce got tired direckly. Her face hung down, very red. SOMEHOW he’d got to make Papa go slower.

“Tell us a story.”— He said it twice before Papa heard.

“A story? Child, I’ve no stories left in me.”

(“You ask him, Luce.”)

“Tell ‘bout when you was a little boy, Papa,” piped Lucie, and trotted a few steps to draw level.

“No, tell ‘bout when you first saw Mamma.” Luce, she loved to hear how Papa’s big sisters had smacked him and put him to bed without his supper; but he liked best the story of how Papa had seen nothing, only Mamma’s leg in a white stocking and a funny black boot, when he saw her first; and it was jumping out of a window. He’d jumped out, too, and chased her; but then he let her go and went away; but as soon as he got home he slapped his leg and called himself a donkey, and hired a horse and galloped ever and ever so many miles back again, to ask her if she’d like to marry him. And first she said she was too young, and then she did. He’d heard it a million times; but it was still exciting to listen to . . . how in a hurry Papa had been.

But to-day everything went wrong. Papa began all right; but so loud that everybody who was passing could hear. But then he got mixed, and left out the best part, and said the same thing over again. And then he couldn’t remember Aunt Tilly’s name, and didn’t listen when they told him, and got furious with himself. He said he’d be forgetting his own name next, and that would be the end of everything. And then he jumped on to the funny bit in the arbour that Mr. Purdy had teased him about, where he’d kissed somebody called Miss Jinny instead of Mamma . . . and this really truly WAS fu............