"I'll be damned!" Philip murmured, "a chap with a mind like Harry's! Lord, it was as hard as a knife! Poor old devil, I suppose he'll wake up in a month and find himself up to the neck! Who's left? That's what I want to know! All the old landmarks are washed away. What the hell is a chap to do? Who's left?" The question drummed insistently into his ears. He found himself aching for friendship. For the last few months he had hardly uttered a word excepting a request for the sugar, perhaps, and a reply to a question at school. His general friendlessness filled him with humiliation. The Walton Street phase had drawn to its dull end long ago and not a figure remained who offered the least hope of companionship. Alec, like the callous swine he had always felt Alec fundamentally to be, had merely disappeared--bearing with him the telescope of high romance, as might have been expected. On Harry the gods had inflicted a terrible cerebral affliction. Philip remembered Harry's attendant lady and shuddered. And Harry had been sweet on Edie once! Oh, yes, Edie! What was it he had heard Dorah and Benjamin saying about Edie? He remembered. Her photograph had been seen by a "millionaire" in the house of a relative of Edie in Pittsburg, U.S.A. The "millionaire," promptly enamoured, had entered into negotiations with the authorities in Doomington, the negotiations were succeeded by a trunk of the most astounding dresses and a first-class ticket to Pittsburg. So much for Edie! In any case she had worn thin ages ago. Then it was that Mamie returned to his mind. His first thought was "Damn that girl! I thought I'd forgotten her!" She filled him with a vivid sense of guilt. "I've had enough!" he vowed. His mind returned to the episode of the signature, and to escape his contrition, he fled from the house and walked swiftly down Blenheim Road. To his horror he discovered that every step he took was actually a step nearer the enchantress. To his horror he was forced to recognize that the thought of her made him tingle with pleasure. The recollection of her began to torture him. It was a double infliction, sensations of guilt and promptings of delight struggling for mastery. When his mind returned to his mother, his despair was more abandoned than it had been since the summer. Yet ever when his gloom was most profound, the girl re-entered his thoughts, whistling as she turned the corner of the barn, brushing his cheeks with her hair. "By God!" he exclaimed. "I lent her that prose translation of Dante!" (He remembered that she had asked who had wrote Dante, and that she had thought it so _delincate_ of him to lend her so sweet a book. And when she'd just finished the Pansy Bright-eye Library she was reading, she'd _love_ to learn all about this here Dante. She was sure he'd be _that_ interesting!)