Although she had been less than her hour with her uncle, she knew that she had no time to spare. She was haunted, as she hurried back again down the village road by alarms, regrets, agonising reproaches that she refused to admit. She fortified her consciousness against everything save the immediate business to which she had bound herself, but every tree upon the road, every hideous cottage, every stone and flower besieged her with memories. “You are leaving us for ever. Why? For Panic?... For Panic?” ... She could hear the voices that would follow the retreat. “But why did she run away like that? It wasn’t even as though their engagement had been forbidden. To be married all in a hurry and in secret—I don’t like the look of it.... She was always such a quiet, sensible girl.” And she knew—it had not needed Uncle Tim’s words to show her—that this act of hers was uprooting her for ever from everything that had made life for her. She would never go back. More deeply than that, she would never belong again, she, who only six months ago had been the bond that had held them all together.... And behind these thoughts were two figures so strangely, so impossibly like one another—the first that woman, suddenly old, leaning back on to Katherine’s breast, fast asleep, tired out, her mother—the second that woman who, only that afternoon, had turned and given both Katherine and Philip that look of triumph.... “I’ve got you both—You see that I shall never let you go. You cannot, cannot, cannot, escape.” That also was her mother. She stopped at the village inn, ‘The Three Pilchards’, saw Dick Penhaligan, the landlord, and an old friend of hers. “Dick, in half-an-hour I want a jingle. I’ve got to go to Rasselas to meet the eight train. I’ll drive myself.” “All right, Miss Katherine,” he said, looking at her with affection. “’Twill be a wild night, I’m thinkin’. Workin’ up wild.” “Twenty minutes, Dick,” she nodded to him, and was off again. She crossed the road, opened the little wicket gate that broke into the shrubbery, found her way on to the lawn, and there, under the oak, was Philip, waiting for her. As she came up to him she felt the first spurt of rain upon her cheek. The long lighted windows of the house were watching them; she drew under the shadow of the tree. “Phil,” she whispered, her hand on his arm, “there isn’t a moment to lose. I’ve arranged everything. We must catch the eight o’clock train at Rasselas. We shall be in London by twelve. I shall go to Rachel Seddon’s. We can be married by Special Licence to-morrow.” She had thought of it so resolutely that she did not realise that it was new to him. He gasped, stepping back from her. “My _dear_ Katie! What _are_ you talking about?”