Rachel, as the train plunged with her into the heart of Sussex, was gazing happily through the window, dreaming, almost dozing, feeling in every part of her a warm and grateful content. Opposite to her Aunt Adela, gaunt and with the expression that she always wore in trains as of one whose person and property were in danger, at any instant, of total destruction, read a life of a recently deceased general whose widow she knew. Uncle John, with three illustrated papers, was interested in photographs of people with one leg in the air and their mouths wide open; every now and again he would say (to nobody in particular), "There's old Reggie Cutler with that foreign woman--_you_ know"--or "Fancy Shorty Monmouth being at Cowes after all this year--you know we heard----" Rachel had been having a wonderful time--that was the great fact that ran, up and down, through her dozing thoughts. Yes, a wonderful time. It was surely, now, a century ago, that strange period when she had dreaded, so terribly, her plunge. That day, after her visit to the Bond Street gallery, when it had all seemed simply more than she could possibly encounter, those talks with May Eversley (who, by the way, had just announced herself as engaged to a middle-aged baronet) when the world had frowned down from a vast, incredible height upon a miserably terrified midget. Why! the absurdity of it! It had all been as easy, simply as easy as though she had been plunged in the very heart of it all her life. Followed there swiftly upon that the knowledge that Roddy Seddon was to be, for this same week-end, at Lady Massiter's. Rachel did not pretend that, ever since that _Meistersinger_ night at the opera she had not known of his attentions to her--impossible to avoid them had she wished, impossible to pretend ignorance of the meaning that his inarticulate sentences had, of late, conveyed, impossible to mistake the laughing hints and suggestions of May and the others. She did not know what answer she would give did he ask her to marry him. At that concrete suggestion her doze left her and, sitting up, staring out at the wonderful day into whose heart muffled lights were now creeping, she asked herself what, indeed, was her real thought of him. He was to her as were Uncle John and Dr. Christopher--safe, kind, simple. He appealed to everything in her that longed for life to be clear, comfortable, without danger. She loved his happiness in all out-of-door things--horses and dogs and fields and his little place in Sussex. Ever since that visit to Uncle Richard's fans she had suspected him of other appreciations and enthusiasms, perhaps she might in time encourage those hidden things in him. Above all did she find him true, straight, honest. Lies, little mannerisms, disguises, these were not in him, he was as clear to her as a mirror, she would trust him beyond anyone she knew.