For three blissful days, did Meynell pitch his tent in Long Whindale. Though the weather broke, and the familiar rain shrouded the fells, he and Mary walked incessantly among them, exploring those first hours of love, when every tone and touch is charged, for lovers, with the whole meaning of the world. And in the evenings he sat between the two women in the little cottage room, reading aloud Catharine's favourite poets; or in the familiar talk, now gay now grave, of their new intimacy, disclosing himself ever more fully, and rooting himself ever more firmly in their hearts. His sudden alarm as to Catharine's health passed away, and Mary's new terror with it. Scarcely a word was said of the troubles ahead. But it was understood that Mary would be in London to hear him preach at St. Hilda's. On the last day of Meynell's visit, Catharine, greatly to her surprise, received a letter from Hester Fox-Wilton. It contained a breathless account of an evening spent in seeing Oedipus Rex played by Mounet Sully at the Comedie Francaise. In this half-sophisticated girl, the famous performance, traditional now through two generations of playgoers, had clearly produced an emotion whereof the expression in her letter greatly disquieted Catharine Elsmere. She felt too--a little grimly--the humour of its address to herself. "Tell me how to answer it, please," she said, handing it to Meynell with a twitching lip. "It is a language I don't understand! And why did they take her to such a play?" Meynell shared her disquiet. For the Greek conception of a remorseless fate, as it is forever shaped and embodied in the tale of Oedipus, had led Hester apparently to a good deal of subsequent browsing in the literature--the magazine articles at any rate--of French determinism; and she rattled through some of her discoveries in this reckless letter: "You talked to me so nicely, dear Mrs. Elsmere, that last evening at Upcote. I know you want me--you want everybody--'to be good!' "But 'being good' has nothing to do with us. "How can it?--such creatures, such puppets as we are! "Poor wretch, Oedipus! He never meant any one any harm--did he?--and yet--you see! "'_Apollo, friends, Apollo it was, that brought all these my woes, my sore, sore woes!--to pass_.' "Dear Mrs. Elsmere!--you can't think what a good doctrine it is after all--how it steadies one! What chance have we against these blundering gods? "Nothing one can do makes any difference. It is, really very consoling if you come to think of it; and it's no sort of good being angry with Apollo!" * * * * * "Part nonsense, part bravado," said Catharine, raising clear eyes, with half a smile in them, to Meynell. "But it makes one anxious." His puckered brow showed his assent. "As soon as the trial is over--within a fortnight certainly--I shall run over to see them." * * * * *