said I at last to Bellwattle, "when you can't think the thing you want to think."

"Do you think you really want to?" said she.

Now, what the devil did she mean?

CHAPTER XII

Three days have run by, and only that I have had no word from Clarissa, I have scarcely been conscious of their passing. Three days, and we have come into a new month, a more wonderful month even than that through which we have just passed; the most wonderful month in the year, were it not that June, July, August, September and October all follow after it.

Three

I watched a lark this morning rise from a tuft of thick sea-grass, such as grows out on the slopes of the cliffs. The whole sea was of quicksilver, throwing back the bright light of a glorious sun. It spread far out to the line of sky, and they met in that haze of heat which makes the horizon so full of mystery. A mile out from shore a mass of gulls were crooshting, filling the distance with their hunger-cries as they flung themselves into the mêlée fighting for their food. I lay watching them, and even from that distance I could see the black body of a cormorant in their midst, diving and diving again, where the gulls could only feed upon the surface. He reminded me of the people who eat in the London restaurants, who have five meals a day; the people who are able to dive into their pockets and pay for food they never want, while the match-sellers and the flower-sellers, the crossing-sweepers and the beggars outside are whispering their hunger cries like the gulls upon the surface.

"I've come to the conclusion that I don't like the cormorant," I said to Bellwattle.

She was lying back on a bed of heather roots. Her eyes were closed. She might have been asleep. I said it softly, therefore, lest it should wake her. She did not open her eyes, but she answered me.

"That's a man who eats too much, isn't it?" said she.

Of course, it may be that she had read my thoughts before I uttered them. I judge her quite capable of it. It was better than thinking she did not know.

"That's why I don't like him," said I. "Sit up a minute. You can see one there in that crowd of gulls. He keeps diving down and gorging himself in the underground grill-room while all those poor wretches are shivering on the pavement."

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