* * * * * Afterwards, when the shadows were lengthening across the fields and the misty sun rode low above the far hills, they sat silently dreaming of their great happiness. It was an afternoon that was to remain, for both of them, throughout their lives, in spite of all after events, a most perfect memory. There are moments in the histories of all of us when we are carried into heights that by the splendour of their view, the fine vigour of their air, the rapture of their achievement offer to us a sufficient reassurance against the ironic powers. We find in them a justification of our hopes, our confidences, our inspirations, our faith.... So, for these few hours at least, Katherine and Philip found their justification. This was a moment that two others, also, in that carriage were never afterwards to forget. Millie, under the warm afternoon sun, had fallen asleep. She woke to a sudden, half-real, half-fantastic realisation of Philip. She was awake, of course, and yet Philip was not quite human to her—or was it that he was more human than he had ever been before? She watched him, with her young, eager, inquisitive gaze, over the cover of her book. She watched him steadily for a long time. She had always liked the clean, bullet-shaped head, his black eyes, his sturdiness and set, square shoulders, his colour and his strength. She had always liked him, but to-day, in this sudden glimpse, he seemed to be revealed to her as someone whom she was seeing for the first time. Millie, in all the freshness of her anticipated attack upon the world, had at this period very little patience for bunglers, for sentimentalists, for nervous and hesitating souls. Now, strangely, she saw in Philip’s eyes some hinted weakness, and yet she did not despise him. “I believe,” she thought, “he’s afraid of us.” That discovery came as though it had been whispered to her by someone who knew. Her old conviction that she knew him better than did the others showed now no signs of faltering. “I believe I could help him as they none of them can,” she thought. “No, not even Katherine.” She had, in spite of her determined, practical common-sense, the most romantic idea of love, and now, as she thought of the two of them wrapped up there before her eyes in one another, she felt irritated by her own isolation. “I wonder whether Katherine understands him really,” she thought. “Katherine’s so simple, and takes everything for granted. It’s enough for her that she’s in love. I don’t believe it’s enough for him.” She had always in very early days felt some protecting, motherly element in her love for Katherine. That protection seemed now to spread to Philip as well. “Oh! I do hope they’re going to be happy,” she thought, and so, taking them both with her under her wing, dozed off to sleep again.... The other was, of course, Henry.