“Love him enough!” Had anyone ever loved anyone before as she loved him? She was not, to any ordinary observer, very greatly changed. Quietly and with all the matter-of-fact half-serious, half-humorous common-sense she went about her ordinary daily affairs. Young Seymour came to tea, and she laughed at him, gave him teacake, and asked him about the latest novel just as she had always done. Mr. Seymour had come expecting to see love’s candle lit for the benefit of his own especial genius. He was greatly disappointed, but also, because he hated Mark, gratified. “I don’t believe she loves him a bit,” he said afterwards. “He came in while I was there, and she didn’t colour up or anything. Didn’t show anything, and I’m pretty observant. She doesn’t love him, and I’m jolly glad—I can’t stand the man.” But those who were near her knew. They felt the heat, they watched the colour, of the pure, unfaltering flame. Old Trenchard, the Aunts, Millie, Henry, her mother, even George Trenchard felt it. “I always knew,” said Millie, “that when love came to Katherine it would be terrible”. She wrote that in a diary that she kept. Mrs. Trenchard said nothing at all. During those weeks Katherine was, for the first time in her life, unaware of her mother. The afternoon of the Christmas Eve of that year was never afterwards forgotten by Katherine. She had been buying last desperate additions to Christmas presents, had fought in the shops and been victorious; then, seeing through the early dusk the lights of the Abbey, she slipped in at the great door, found a seat near the back of the nave, and remembered that always, at this hour, on Christmas Eve, a Carol Service was held. The service had not yet begun, and a hush, with strange rhythms and pulsations in it, as though some phantom conductor were leading a phantom orchestra, filled the huge space. A flood of people, dim and very silent, spread from wall to wall. Far away, candles fluttered, trembled and flung strange lights into the web of shadow that seemed to swing and stir as though driven by some wind. Katherine sank into a happy, dreamy bewilderment. The heat of the building after the cold, frosty air, some old scent of candles and tombstones and ancient walls, the consciousness of utter, perfect happiness carried her into a state that was half dream, half reality. She closed her eyes, and soon the voices from very far away rose and fell with that same phantom, remotely inhuman urgency. A boy’s voice that struck, like a dart shot by some heavenly archer, at her heart, awoke her. This was “Good King Wenceslaus”. A delicious pleasure filled her: her eyes flooded with tears and her heart beat triumphantly. “Oh! how happy I am! And I realise it—I _know_ that I can never be happier again than I am now!” The carol ceased. After a time, too happy for speech, she went out.