Secretly she knew that some day, when the impulse seized her, she would go to visit him at Barhanger. But with amazing credulity she told herself: Of course I shall never go to see him. If he cares to ask me I will come. But he must take the initiative, not I.... But she began to picture their meeting. She began to conjure up images of Seahill and the Essex countryside and he and she walking and talking amidst a background of her own imagining. Just as in the old days she had invented an “ideal” conversation to be pursued at any surprise meeting with her father, so now she concocted a special dialogue between herself and Verreker, which, if he should only play the part allotted to him, would reveal her in an attractive and mysterious light. Of course he would not do so: of that she was quite certain, yet the manufacture of ideal rôles for him and herself gave her a good deal of restricted pleasure. She must at this time have decided definitely to go and see him, otherwise there could have been no inducement for her to dream dreams. But she still told herself that she would not see him till he had seen her.... One evening she visited the reference department of the Bockley Carnegie library and consulted a map of Essex. Barhanger was almost on the sea-coast; five miles from the nearest railway station, overlooking one of the great tidal estuaries of the Essex rivers. And Barhanger Creek reached right up to the village of Barhanger.... She had not thought it was so near the sea. She had pictured an inland village with a village green and thatched cottages and perhaps a single-line railway station. Now she had to dream her dreams over again in a different setting, and into this new setting came the creek and the broad estuary and the shining sea, all magnificently idealized, all transfigured by the presence of herself and Verreker.... It was curious how the thought of him awoke in her old dreams and aspirations. She began once more to revile her own soul for its selfishness and avarice: she began to wish for her old pianoforte prowess and such education as she had once managed to cram into that head of hers. Yet against her will was all this change and flurry: she was always protesting, I am better as I am. I want to be quiet and respectable. I don’t want to see him or to know him, because he has unlimited power to make me unhappy.... Her superb serenity left her. She became once more a foolish, unreliable creature of fierce trivialities. She no longer took any interest in the affairs of Amelia and her mother and Mr. Hobbs. She began to think rather acutely of Helen, though. How would Helen come into the matter? Would Helen be jealous of her interference? ... And did he love Helen? Or was it only a marriage of convenience? All those things she would never find out unless she visited him. Though, of course, she would not visit him without an invitation. That was quite decided.