"Oh, _gentlemen_ do!" she said, "use fallacies to glide over tight places in arguments. And they browbeat schoolgirls with them. It's that, that underneath, has been exasperating me with you. You regarded me at that date--three-quarters of a day ago--as a schoolgirl." Tietjens said: "I don't now!" He added: "Heaven knows I don't now!" She said: "No; you don't now!" He said: "It didn't need your putting up all that blue stocking erudition to convince me. . . ." "Blue stocking!" she exclaimed contemptuously. "There's nothing of the blue stocking about me. I know Latin because father spoke it with us. It was your pompous blue socks I was pulling." Suddenly she began to laugh. Tietjens was feeling sick, physically sick. She went on laughing. He stuttered: "What is it?" "The sun!" she said, pointing. Above the silver horizon was the sun; not a red sun: shining, burnished. "I don't see . . ." Tietjens said. "What there is to laugh at?" she asked. "It's the day! . . . The longest day's begun . . . and to-morrow's as long. . . . The summer solstice, you know. . . . After to-morrow the days shorten towards winter. But to-morrow's as long. . . . I'm so glad . . ." "That we've got through the night? . . ." Tietjens asked. She looked at him for a long time. "You're not so dreadfully ugly, really," she said. Tietjens said: "What's that church?" Rising out of the mist on a fantastically green knoll, a quarter of a mile away, was an unnoticeable place of worship: an oak shingle tower roof that shone grey like lead: an impossibly bright weathercock, brighter than the sun. Dark elms all round it, holding wetnesses of mist. "Icklesham!" she cried softly. "Oh, we're nearly home. Just above Mountby . . . That's the Mountby drive. . . ." Trees existed, black and hoary with the dripping mist. Trees in the hedgerow and the avenue that led to Mountby: it made a right-angle just before coming into the road and the road went away at right-angles across the gate. "You'll have to pull to the left before you reach the avenue," the girl said. "Or as like as not the horse will walk right up to the house. The higgler who had him used to buy Lady Claudine's eggs. . . ." Tietjens exclaimed barbarously: "Damn Mountby. I wish we'd never come near it," and he whipped the horse into a sudden trot. The hoofs sounded suddenly loud. She placed her hand on his gloved driving hand. Had it been his flesh she wouldn't have done it. She said: "My dear, it couldn't have lasted for ever . . . But you're a good man. And very clever. . . . You will get through. . . ."