She gave them each a little nod of farewell and tripped lightly out of the room. The two men looked at each other, rather sadly. “Oh, Raine--is it too late? Couldn't you?” “No, dad,” said Raine. “I am afraid other things are too serious.” Later in the day he opened his note-book and his eye fell upon the last fragment he had scribbled. He threw it upon his dressing-table with an exclamation of impatience. The personal application of his aphorisms was too sudden and obvious to be pleasant. There was no doubt now in his mind as to the face that attracted him to Geneva. It had vanished on the first day of his arrival, when he had seen Katherine comforting the hurt child. He was conscious too that it had been Katherine all along, at Oxford, whose memory had haunted him, that he had only evoked that of Felicia in order to enable him to deceive himself. He had practised the self-delusion systematically, whenever his thoughts had drifted away from the work and interests that surrounded him. He had made light of the matter, treated it jestingly, grown angry when it obtruded itself seriously on his thoughts. For he had shrunk, with the instinctive fear of a man of strong nature, from exposing to the touch a range of feelings which had once brought him great sorrow. To love meant to bring into play a man's emotions, infinitely deeper than those of a boy, and subject to far more widely-reaching consequences. For this reason he had mocked at the idea of being in love with Katherine, had forced himself, since the power that drew him to Geneva could not be disregarded, to consider Felicia as an equal component, and at the time of his light confidence to Mrs. Monteith, had almost persuaded himself that he was indulging in a whimsical holiday fancy. But he could delude himself no longer. From the first meeting he knew that it was not the young girl, but the older, deeper-natured woman that had stirred him. He had felt kindly and grateful to her for his father's sake; but there his feelings had stopped. Whereas, with Katherine, he had been drifting, he knew not whither. The process of subjective development had been brought suddenly to its climax by his father's words. He realized that he loved Katherine. To fly away from Geneva at this moment was particularly unpleasant--necessitating almost the rending of his heart-strings. But as he had decided, he sent a telegram to Rogers at Chamonix, secured a place in the next morning's diligence, and packed his Gladstone-bag and knapsack. He was sincerely sorry for Felicia. No decent, honest man can learn that a girl has given him her heart in vain, without a certain amount of pain and perplexity. “And to think that I have been such a blind idiot as never even to suspect it?” he exclaimed with a vicious jerk of the bag-strap, which burst it, and thereby occasioned a temporary diversion.