Rose’s look changed in an instant. The words were spoken by the Langham of her earliest acquaintance. The man who that morning had asked her to play to him had gone--vanished away. ‘How exhilarating!’ she said scornfully. ‘Don’t you wonder how anyone can ever tear themselves away from the country?’ ‘Rose, don’t be abusive,’ said Robert, opening his eyes at her tone. Then, passing his arm through hers he looked banteringly down upon her. ‘For the first time since you left the metropolis you have walked yourself into a color. It’s becoming--and it’s Murewell--so be civil!’ ‘Oh, nobody denies you a high place in milkmaids!’ she said, with her head in air--and they went off into a minute’s sparring. Meanwhile, Langham, on the other side of the road, walked up slowly, his eyes on the ground. Once, when Rose’s eye caught him, a shock ran through her. There was already a look of slovenly age, about his stooping bookworm’s gait. Her companion of the night before--handsome, animated, human--where was he? The girl’s heart felt a singular contraction. Then she turned and rent herself, and Robert found her more mocking and sprightly than ever. At the Rectory gate Robert ran on to overtake a farmer on the road. Rose stooped to open the latch; Langham mechanically made a quick movement forward to anticipate her. Their fingers touched; she drew hers hastily away and passed in, an erect and dignified figure, in her curving garden hat. Langham went straight up to his room, shut the door and stood before the open window, deaf and blind to everything save an inward storm of sensation. ‘Fool! Idiot!’ he said to himself at last, with fierce stifled emphasis, while a kind of dumb fury with himself and circumstance swept through him. That he, the poor and solitary student whose only sources of self-respect lay in the deliberate limitations, the reasoned and reasonable renunciations he had imposed upon his life, should have needed the reminder of his old pupil not to fall in love with his brilliant, ambitious sister! His irritable self-consciousness enormously magnified Elsmere’s motive and Elsmere’s words. That golden vagueness and softness of temper which had possessed him since his last sight of her gave place to one of bitter tension. With sardonic scorn he pointed out to himself that his imagination was still held by, his nerves were still thrilling under, the mental image of a girl looking up to him as no woman had ever looked--a girl, white-armed, white-necked--with softened eyes of appeal and confidence. He bade himself mark that during the whole of his morning walk with Robert down to its last stage, his mind had been really absorbed in some preposterous dream he was now too self-contemptuous to analyze. Pretty well for a philosopher, in four days! What a ridiculous business is life--what a contemptible creature is man, how incapable of dignity, of consistency!