For six days we maintained our polite and measured interchange of courtesies. I was left free most of the time to entertain myself. He was a perfect host, and knew exactly how far to share my company without appearing niggardly of his companionship or, on the other hand, intruding it on me to such an extent that we wore out our common fund of interests. For myself, I wished that I might see more of him. Never by any direct statement did he own that there was any relationship between us. Yet gradually he began to imply his intention in having me to visit him. I would have been completely happy, had it not been that Vi was absent. I reckoned up the hours until I should return. All day my imagination was following her movements. I refused to look ahead to the certainty of approaching separation--it was enough for me that I could be near her in the present. It was strange how poignant the world had become, how subtly, swiftly suggestive, since I had discovered her presence in it. All my sensations, even those outwardly unrelated to her, grouped themselves into a memory of her sweetness. It was a blind and pagan love she had aroused--one which recognized no standards, but craved only fulfilment. There were times when I stood back appalled, as a man who comes suddenly to the edge of a precipice, when I realized where this love was leading. Then my awakened conscience would remind me of my promise--that we would be only friends. These were the thoughts which now made me glad, now sorrowful, as I rode through the leafy lanes round Woadley at the side of my proud old grandfather. I would steal guilty glances at him, marveling that no rumor of what I was thinking had come to him by some secret process of telepathy. He looked so cold and unimpassioned, I wondered if he had ever loved a woman. I began to love the Woadley country with the love which only comes from ownership. The white Jacobean Hall, with the chestnuts and elm-trees grouped about it and the doves fluttering above its gables, became the starting point for all the future chapters of my romance. I began to see life in its prosperous, substantial aspect. The stately dignity of my environment had its subconscious effect upon my lawless turbulence. In the morning I would wake with the rooks cawing and, going to the window, would look out on the sunken garden, the peaches ripening against the walls, the dew sparkling on the trim box-hedges, and the leaves beating the air like wings of anchored butterflies as the wind from the sea stirred them. Everywhere the discipline of history was apparent--the accumulated, ordered effort of generations of men and women dead and gone. I had been accustomed to regard myself as an isolated unit, responsible to myself alone for my actions.