Her thoughts went back to that day that she had spent with Philip at Roche St. Mary Moor. Her loneliness had begun quite definitely from that day. Only a fortnight later Philip had departed. She had not seen him since then. But even had he been with her she thought that he would not, very greatly, have affected her loneliness. He might even have accentuated it. For Philip had behaved very strangely since that afternoon at Roche St. Mary. It was, Katherine thought, as though, having made his bolt for freedom and failed, he simply resigned himself. He only once afterwards alluded to the affair. One day he said to her quite suddenly: “After all, it’s worth it—so long as you’re there.” “What’s worth it?” she had asked him. “But if you were to leave me,” he went on, and stopped and looked at her. “What’s worth it?” she had repeated. “Being swallowed up,” he had answered her. “Your mother and I are going to pay calls together this afternoon.” He had during these last weeks been wonderful about her mother; he had agreed to everything that she proposed, had run errands for her, supported her opinions, “been quite a son to her,” Aunt Betty, happy at this transformation, had declared—and he had been perfectly miserable. Katherine knew that. And his misery had kept them apart. Katherine had never loved him so intensely as she did during those last days, and he had loved her with a kind of passionate, almost desperate, intensity. But their love had never brought them together. There had always been someone between. It was as good as though he had said to her: “We have still another six months before our marriage. You have told me definitely that you will not give up the family. Your mother is determined not to surrender a bit of you to me, therefore I am to be surrendered to your mother. I am willing that this should be so because I love you, but if I change, if I am dull and lifeless you mustn’t be surprised. “There’s the earlier life, which one can’t forget all at once, however deeply one wants to. Meanwhile, I hate your mother and your mother hates me. But she’ll never let me go unless you force her to. She knows that I can’t break away so long as you’re here. And she means you to be here always. What would a strong man do? Forget the earlier life, I suppose. So would I if I had you all to myself. But I have to share you—and that gives the earlier life a chance.” Although he had never opened his lips, Katherine heard him saying all this as though he were there in front of her, there with his charm and his hopeless humours about himself, his weakness that she had once thought was strength, and for which now she only loved him all the more.