Philip was silent a moment. Then for the first time, at the sense of peace that was here so predominant a note, or at the sight of Tom himself, in all the vigour and freshness of a youth that measured by years was already past, some faint gleam, or if not a gleam, the sense that light was possible to him, broke through the dismal darkness of his soul. For one short moment he laid his hand on his friend's arm. "Make allowance for me, Tom," he said. In spite of his long aloofness from the fretful race of men and the ways of them, Merivale had not forgotten--indeed it is as impossible for one who has ever known it to forget it as it is to forget how to swim--that divine gift of tact. Indeed, it is probable that his long sojournings alone had, if anything, made more sensitive those surfaces which come into contact with others and which others insensibly feel (for this is tact) to be smooth and warm and wise. And it was a fine touch that he did not respond, however remotely, to Philip's appeal, for Philip had told him that pity and sympathy were exactly what he could not stand. Consequently he let this cry be the voice of one in the desert; it wanted silence, not audible answer. He, like the trees in the garden and the stream, must be dumb to it. This silence was the key to several days that followed: there was, in fact, no intimate conversation of any sort between the two friends. Philip would sit for hours in the garden, stung sometimes into spasmodic activity, during which he would send off a dozen telegrams to his office on monetary affairs, but for the most part with an unread paper on his knees, or a book that tumbled unheeded on to the grass. But soon during this frosty and strictured time, Merivale thought he saw, as birds know the hour of sunrise before the faintest dawn illuminates the sky, that there were signs that this frost was less binding than it had been. Philip would take a pruning-knife sometimes, and with his deft and practised hand reduce a rose to reasonable dimensions. Sometimes half-way through the operation he would let the knife fall from his fingers, as if his labours, like everything else, were not worth while; but often afterwards he would resume his labours, and enable the tree to do justice to itself. By degrees, too, these outbursts of City activity grew rarer and more spasmodic, becoming, as it were, but the echoes of a habit rather than demonstrations of the habit itself. He did not join Merivale in his long tramps over the forest, but he began to wait for his return, and if he knew from what point of the compass he was likely to return, he sometimes set out to meet him. Once Merivale was very late: his tramp had taken him further than usual, and night, falling cloudy and moonless, had surprised him in a wood where even one who knew the forest as well as he might miss his way. On this occasion he found Philip pacing up and down the garden in some agitation.