At last, with a sudden movement, as though she had realised that there was little time to waste, she broke from him and stood up, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief; then, with that strange note of fierceness, so foreign to the old mild Katherine, she said: “But now I see—I see everything. What Millie said is true—I can’t have it both ways, I’ve got to choose. Mother doesn’t care for anything so much as for beating Philip, for humiliating him, for making him do everything that she says. That other woman too—she’d like to see him humiliated, laughed at—I _know_ that she’s like that, cruel and hard. “And he’s only got me in all the world. I can beat that other woman only by showing her that I’m stronger than she is. I thought once that it was Phil who would take me and look after me, but now it is _I_ that must look after him. “If we stay, if we do as Mother wishes, we shall never escape. I love everything here, I love them all, I can’t leave them unless I do it now, _now_! Even to-morrow I shall be weak again. Mother’s stronger than we are. She’s stronger, I do believe, than anyone. Uncle Tim, we must go to-night!” “To-night!” he repeated, staring at her. “Now, at once, in an hour’s time. We can drive to Rasselas. There’s the London Express at eight o’clock. It’s in London by midnight. I can wire to Rachel. She’ll have me. We can be married, by special licence, to-morrow!” He did not seem astonished by her impetuosity. He got up slowly from his chair, knocked over with his elbow the blotting-paper upon which were the dried flowers, swore, bent down and picked them up slowly one by one, rose at last and, very red in the face with his exertions, looked at her. Then he smiled gently, stroking his fingers through his beard. “My dear, how you’ve changed!” he said. “You understand, Uncle Tim,” she urged. “I couldn’t tell Millie. They’d make it bad for her afterwards, and it would hurt Mother too. I don’t want Mother to be left alone. It’s the only thing to do. I saw it all in a flash this evening when Mother was speaking. Even to-morrow may be too late, when I see the garden again and the village and when they’re all kind to me. And perhaps after all it will be all right. Only I must show them that Phil comes first, that if I must choose, I choose Phil.” She paused, breathlessly. He was grave again when he spoke: “You know, my dear, what you are doing, don’t you? I won’t say whether I think you right or wrong. It’s for you to decide, and only you. But just think. It’s a tremendous thing. It’s more than just marrying Philip. It’s giving up, perhaps, everything here—giving up Garth and Glebeshire and the house. Giving up your Mother may be for ever. I know your Mother. It is possible that she will never forgive you.” Katherine’s under lip quivered. She nodded her head.