She followed tracks across the fields until she came to a lane and then to a road, followed that till she found crossroads and a signpost, and then discovered that she was going in the opposite direction to that of Abington. So she turned back about a mile, and going a little farther found herself in familiar country and reached home in time for a bath before luncheon. That was Beatrix's day with the hounds, but she had plenty to think about as she walked and trotted along the quiet lanes. She felt rather soft with regard to Bertie and Mollie. He had shown himself in a light that touched her, and the conviction, which at one period of their conversation she had quite sincerely expressed to him, that he was not nearly good enough for her chosen friend, she found herself to have relinquished. As the young man with some reputation for love-making, who had seemed to be uncertain whether he would or he wouldn't, he had certainly not been good enough, nor on that side of him would he ever be good enough. But there had been something revealed that went a good deal deeper than that. Beatrix thought that his love for Mollie was after all of the right sort, and was honouring to her friend. She also thought that she herself might perhaps do something to further it. As for Mollie, she had found herself somewhat impressed by the young man's statement that she had given him little encouragement. She had seen for herself, watching the pair of them when they had been together, how she had been invited to it. Here again her own experience that had been so sweet to her came in. The man shows himself attracted. He makes little appeals and advances. An aura begins to form round him; he is not as other men. But the girl shrinks instinctively from those advances at first, holding her maiden stronghold. Then, as instinctively, she begins to invite them, and greatly daring makes some fluttering return, to be followed perhaps by a more determined closing up. The round repeats itself, and she is led always further along the path that she half fears to tread, until at last she is taken by storm, and then treads it with no fear at all, but with complete capitulation and high joy.