Jack kept his intention, and went up to London the next day. He had made up his mind absolutely that he would not go back to Rome, having a new sort of feeling born within him, that after all that had happened he had no right to haunt Phillis with the persistency he had shown of late. It no longer seemed to him fair. He thought that the most manly course would be to leave her alone at any rate until this winter were past. Then, if she were still unwon, he might be able to speak to her of a love which she might at last recognise as steadfast. How could she be expected as yet to trust him? But he got into a habit about this time of brooding on the picture he had seen as he rode through Whitcote with his father--the pretty homely Vicarage, the creepers growing up to the chimneys, the green turf, the rooks' nests in the old trees. And always--that was the worst--there stood a woman's figure at the door, a woman whose eyes were fastened on the gate, as if she were waiting happily for some one. Still, a good deal of credit was due to him for the way in which he fought against these not very cheerful thoughts, so as to escape from the morbid dejection which might have made his life, and that of others, miserable. Work is an excellent refuge, as everybody says: probably because it is an axiom which is seldom taken on trust, and therefore comes freshly to each person in the form of an individual discovery. Jack worked hard, and liked it. Clive was another refuge; he needed a great deal of cheering and keeping up, his own struggle not having had the effect of putting life into him. He was shy and sensitive, and many people would have thought uninteresting, but Ibbetson wanted a personal interest about him just at this time, and had a feeling as if here were a slender link with Phillis. He sometimes laughed at his own efforts to prop up Clive, and yet he did it vigorously. The props were of many kinds--getting him to take school work in an East-end district on Sundays, he began to think would turn out one of the most effectual. A disappointment which Jack felt very keenly at this time, was the receiving no answer to his letter to Phillis. He had made sure she would write, and, though he even told himself that he was prepared for what she might tell him, there was a horrible blank in the silence, which seemed almost worse. He invented reasons for her silence with really remarkable ingenuity, but the one which seemed most probable was, that she did not wish to enter on the subject of her own prospects with him. When Clive came to see him or he went to see Clive, the conversation revolved curiously round one or two centres. "Well, how are you getting on?" Jack would ask with great cheerfulness. "Oh, I don't know." This with much depression. "Nonsense. What are you out of heart about? Davis sticks by you, I'm sure." "Yes, he's a very good old chap. But what's a fellow to do when the heads are against him?"