Rachel had liked Philip when she met him at the Trenchards; now, when he came to call, she found that she did not get on with him. He seemed to be suspicious of her: he was awkward and restrained. His very youthful desire to make the person he was with like him, seemed now to give way to an almost truculent surliness. “I don’t care whether you like me or not,” he seemed to say. “Katherine’s mine and not yours any longer.” Neither Philip nor Rachel told Katherine that they did not like one another. Roddy Seddon, Rachel’s husband, on the other hand, liked Philip very much. Lying for many years on his back had given him a preference for visitors who talked readily and gaily, who could tell him about foreign countries, who did not too obviously pity him for being “out of the running, poor beggar.” “You don’t like the feller?” Roddy said to his wife. “He doesn’t like me,” said Rachel. “Rot,” said Roddy. “You’re both jealous. You both want Katherine.” “I shan’t be jealous,” answered Rachel, “if he’s good enough for her—if he makes her happy.” “He seems to me a very decent sort of feller,” said Roddy. Meanwhile Rachel adored Katherine’s happiness. She had chafed for many years now at what she considered was the Trenchards’ ruthless sacrifice of Katherine to their own selfish needs. “They’re never going to let her have any life of her own,” she said. Now Katherine _had_ a life of her own, and if only that might continue Rachel would ask no more. Rachel had had her own agonies and disciplines in the past, and they had left their mark upon her. She loved her husband and her child, and her life was sufficiently filled with their demands upon her, but she was apprehensive of happiness—she saw the Gods taking away with one hand whilst they gave with the other. “I knew more about the world at ten,” she thought, “than Katherine will ever know. If she’s hurt, it will be far worse for her than it ever was for me.” Although she delighted in Katherine’s happiness, she trembled at the utter absorption of it. “We aren’t meant to trust anything so much,” she thought, “as Katherine trusts his love for her.”