All this he heard during a terribly heavy three weeks with relatives in the North, during a hot and glittering July in London when the world seemed to gyrate with the flashing cabs, the seething crowds, the glass and flowers and scents of a London season. Katherine seemed dreadfully far away from him. He was aware very vividly how bad it was for a healthy young man of his age to have no definite occupation. The men whom he knew in town seemed to him both uninteresting and preoccupied. A day in England seemed of so vast a length. In Russia time had been of no importance at all, and one day had vanished into another without any sound or sign. Here every clock in the town seemed to scream to him that he must take care to make the most of every second. This practical English world, moreover, could offer no friendly solution for the troubles that beset him. He knew very well that if he asked any man at the club for advice he would be frankly dismissed for a fool. “What! You like the girl but can’t bear the Mother-in-law! My dear boy, any music hall will tell you how common that is. Wait till you’re married, then you can clear off all right—let the old woman scream as much as you like. What! the girl wants to stay with the mother? Well, again, wait till you’re married. The girl will follow you fast enough then!” How could he expect that any ordinary healthy Englishman would understand the soft, billowy, strangling web that the Trenchard family had, by this time, wound about him? Yes, another six months would complete the business.... One hope remained to him—that when they knew of his immoral life in Moscow they would definitely insist on Katherine’s leaving him—and, if it came to that, she would stand by him. He knew that she would stand by him. He would himself long ago have told Trenchard had he not been sure that someone else would do that for him, and that then the sense of his own subterfuge and concealment would add to their horror and disgust. The stronger their disgust the better for him. The day of that disclosure seemed now his only hope. Let them fling him off and he knew what Katherine would do!... Upon a torrid afternoon, two days after the Trenchard-Faunder wedding, an irresistible desire to see Katherine drove him to the Westminster house. He rang the bell, and was told by Rocket, who always treated him with an air of polite distrust, that the ladies were out, but might be in at any time. “I will wait,” said Philip. “Very good, sir,” said Rocket reluctantly, and showed him into the drawing-room, cool and damp like a green cave. To Rocket’s own restrained surprise, old Mr. Trenchard was there sitting quite alone, with a shawl covering his knees, in a large arm-chair near the empty fireplace.