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of insects. The cliff was immutable. The sea, but for its imperceptible upward movement, motionless; only the line of life pulsed with a fierce, miniature rthythm as the insects struggled up, always up, always away from the engulfing sea, and fought with each other, and tore each other down, and mounted upon each other in their effort to escape and rise above the creeping tide; all with a hallucinated ardour of faith, their little eyes fixed on the cliff that all sought unavailingly to scale. Then silence; stillness. The tide of death had mounted and they sank, generation after generation, line after line; and the ledge of stilled consciousness that lay just below the surface was as distant in reality, as inaccessible and perished, as the ledges on which the Pharaohs slept, or ape-like men lay curled in profundities of oblivion. ‘Yes; that’s life,’ Monica heard herself say in the darkness.

When Miriam brought her her early tea, she told her that she would spend the morning in bed and see no one. ‘No one, Miriam, not even Mr. Wilmott. I’m too tired after that horrid fall last night.’ She knew that Clive would not come. It was Hester she feared. A terror had waked in her with her later waking and the ledge of life to which she still clung was real to her again and the cliff and