No one could ever call Henry a gay youth. I don’t think that anyone ever did, and although with every year that he grows he is stronger, more cheerful and less clumsy and misanthropic, he will never be really gay. He will always be far too conscious of the troubles that may tumble on to his head, of the tragedies of his friends and the evils of his country. And yet, in spite of his temperament, he had, deep down in his soul, a sense of humour, an appreciation of his own comic appearance, a ready applause for the optimists (although to this he would never, never confess). “He’s a surly brute,” I heard someone say of him once—but it is possible (I do not say probable) that he will be a great man one of these days, and then everyone will admire his fine reserve, “the taciturnity of a great man”; in one of his sudden moments of confidence he confessed to me that this particular journey down to Glebeshire was the beginning of the worst time in his life—not, of course, quite the beginning. Philip’s appearance on that foggy night of his grandfather’s birthday was that—and he is even now not so old but that there may be plenty of bad times in store for him. But he will know now how to meet them; this was his first test of responsibility. He had always told himself that what he really wanted was to show, in some heroic fashion, his love for Katherine. Let him be tested, he cried, by fire, stake, torture and the block, and he would “show them.” Well, the test had come. As he sat opposite her in the railway carriage he faced it. He might go up to Philip and say to him: “Look here, is it true? Did you have a mistress in Moscow for three years and have a son by her?” But what then? If Philip laughed, and said: “Why, of course ... everyone knows it. That’s all over now. What is it to you?” He would answer: “It’s this to me. I’m not going to have a rotten swelp of a fellow marrying my sister and making her miserable.” Then Philip might say: “My dear child—how young you are! all men do these things. I’ve finished with that part of my life. But, anyway, don’t interfere between me and Katherine, you’ll only make her miserable and you’ll do no good.”