But Katherine replied: “You’re wrong, Millie. I can keep it all. I _will_ keep it all. I love Phil, but I love Mother and you and Henry and This—This—all of it. If I were to marry Phil now Mother would never forgive me—you know that she would not. I could never come back. I must lose it all.” “You’d rather lose Philip then?” “No. _That_ never!” “Well—Anna’s after him, Katie. Russia’s after him. He’s awfully unhappy—and you’re unfair. You’re giving him nothing, not even himself. You say that you love him, but you want things all your way. I tell you you deserve to lose ...” then suddenly softening again: “But I’ll help you, Katie dear, whatever way it is. Oh! I’m so glad that we’ve spoken. We’re together now, and nothing can part us.” Katherine caught her hand and held her close. “What would Mother do, do you think, if she knew about Anna?” she said, at last. “I don’t know,” Millie answered, “Mother’s so strange. I believe she’d do nothing. She’d know that if she dismissed him she’d lose you.” Then Katherine suddenly, holding Millie so close to her that their hearts beat as one, said: “I love him so. I love him so.... Everything must go if he wants it to.” And then, as though the house, the land, the place that had always been hers, answered her challenge, a lightning flash struck the darkness and the rain broke in a thunder of sound. * * * * * All through the wedding-ceremony Katherine felt insanely that she was no longer a Trenchard—insanely because if she was not a Trenchard what was she? Always before in these Trenchard gatherings she had known herself wonderfully at home, sinking down with the kind of cosy security that one greets as one drops into a soft, familiar bed. Every Trenchard was, in one way or another, so like every other Trenchard that a Trenchard gathering was in the most intimate sense of the word a family party. At a Beaminster gathering you were always aware of a spirit of haughty contempt for the people who were still outside, but at a Trenchard or Faunder assembly the people outside did not exist at all. “They were not there.” The Beaminsters said: “Those we don’t know are not worth knowing.” The Trenchards said: “Those we can’t see don’t exist”—and they could only see one another. All this did not mean that the Trenchards were not very kind to the human beings in the villages and towns under their care. But then these dependents _were_ Trenchards, just as old Trenchard chairs and tables in old Trenchard houses were Trenchards. The Beaminsters had been broken all in a moment because they had tried to do something that their Age no longer permitted them to do. The Trenchards were much more difficult to break, because they were not trying to do anything at all. There was no need for them to be “Positive” about anything....