No, he wanted none of their company, and he was glad that it was still unsafe for him to travel, though he longed for the fresh air. But that he did wish for some company became evident to him this afternoon, although he had received with a certain amount of resignation a note in which Ellen informed him that their father seemed so fidgety and unwell that she could not drive over to Bradmouth that day. He could no longer disguise the truth from himself, it was the society of Joan that he desired; and of Joan he had seen less and less during the last fortnight. Neither she nor anybody else had said anything to that effect, but he was convinced that she was being kept out of his way. Why should she be kept out of his way? A guilty conscience gave him the answer readily enough: because it was not desirable that they should remain upon terms of such intimacy. Alas! it was so. He had fought against the fact, ridiculing and denying it up to this very hour, but now that fact had become too strong for him, and as he sat a prey to loneliness and uncomfortable thoughts, he was fain to acknowledge before the tribunal of his own heart that, if he was not in love with Joan, he did not know what was the matter with him. At the least it had come to this: her presence seemed necessary to him, and the prospective pain of parting from her absolutely intolerable. It is not too much to say that this revelation of his sad plight dismayed Henry. For a moment, indeed, his faculties and judgment were paralysed. To begin with, for him it was a new experience, and therefore the more dangerous and crushing. If this were not a mere momentary madness, and if the girl cared for him as it would appear that he cared for her, what could be the issue? He had no great regard for the prejudice and conventions of caste, but, circumstanced as he was, it seemed absolutely impossible that he should marry her. Had he been independent, provided always that she did care for him, he would have done it gladly enough. But he was not independent, and such an act would mean the utter ruin of his family. More, indeed: if he could bring himself to sacrifice _them,_ he had now no profession and no income. And how would a man hampered and dragged down by a glaring _mésalliance_ be able to find fresh employment by means of which he could support a wife? No, there was an end of it. The thing could not possibly be done. What, then, was the alternative? Clearly one only. To go, and at once. Some men so placed might have found a third solution, but Henry did not belong to this class. His character and sense of right rebelled against any such notion, and the habits of self-restraint in which he had trained himself for years afforded what he believed to be an impregnable rampart, however frail might be the citadel within.