Ah! that was just it. He would make her miserable; he could not look at her happiness and contemplate his own destruction of it. And yet if Philip were to marry her and afterwards neglect her, and leave her as he had left this other woman, would not Henry then reproach himself most bitterly for ever and ever? But perhaps, after all, the story of that wretched man at the Club was untrue, it had been, perhaps, grossly exaggerated. Henry had a crude but finely-coloured fancy concerning the morals of the Man of the World. Had not Seymour dismissed such things with a jolly laugh and “my dear fellow, it’s no business of ours. We’re all very much alike if we only knew.” Had he not a secret envy of this same Man of the World who carried off his sins so lightly with so graceful an air? But now it was no case of an abstract sinner—it was a case of the happiness or unhappiness of the person whom Henry loved best in life. A subtler temptation attacked him. He knew (he could not possibly doubt) that if his parents were told, Philip would have to go. One word from him to his mother, and the family were rid of this fellow who had come out of nowhere to disturb their peace. The thing was so infernally easy. As he sat there, reading, apparently, his novel, his eyes were on Katherine’s face. She was leaning back, her eyes closed, smiling at her thoughts. What would Katherine do? Would she leave them all and go with him? Would she hate him, Henry, for ever afterwards? Yes, that she would probably do.... Ah, he was a weak, feeble, indeterminate creature. He could make up his mind about nothing.... That evening he had had with Philip, it had been glorious and disgusting, thrilling and sordid. He was rather glad that he had been drunk—he was also ashamed. He was intensely relieved that none of the family had seen him, and yet he saw himself shouting to them: “I was drunk the other night, and I talked to rotten women and I didn’t care what happened to me.... I’m a boy no longer.” He hated Philip, and yet, perhaps, Philip was leading him to freedom. That fellow in the novel about the sea and the forests (Henry could see him challenging his foes, walking quietly across the square towards his friend, who was waiting to slay him). He would have admired Philip. Henry saw himself as that fine solitary figure waiting for his opportunity. How grand he could be had he a chance, but life was so lofty, so unromantic, so conventional. Instead of meeting death like a hero, he must protect Katherine ... and he did not know how to do it.... As the sun was sinking in a thick golden web that glittered behind the dark purple woods—woods that seemed now to stand like watchers with their fingers upon their lips—the train crossed the boundary river. That crossing bad been, ever since he could remember, a very great moment to Henry. To-day the recognition of it dragged him away from Philip and Katherine, from everything but Glebeshire.