When she had been a very, very small child she had decided for herself that the way to give life a real value was to fix one’s affection upon someone: perhaps there had been also the fear of life as a motive, the discovery that the best way to be protected from all kinds of perils was to be so fond of someone that nothing else mattered. With a quiet, undemonstrative but absolutely tenacious hold she attached herself to her nurse, who deserted her on the appearance of a younger sister, to her mother, who died, to her father, who was always so busy that loving him was like being devoted to a blotting pad. When she was ten years of age she went to school, and clung to a succession of older girls, who, however, found, in her lack of all demonstrations, her almost cynical remarks, her inability to give any expression whatever to her emotions, something, at first, terrifying, and afterwards merely tiresome. When she was about eighteen she discovered that the person to whom a woman should be properly attached was her husband. She waited then very calmly until she was twenty, when George Trenchard appeared, proposed to her, and was accepted. She took it so utterly for granted that her devotion to him would fill sufficiently the energy of her remaining days that it wasn’t until the end of a year of married life that she discovered that, although he liked her very much, he could do quite beautifully without her, and did, indeed, for three-quarters of every day forget her altogether. No one, except herself, knew whether that discovery hurt her. She, of course, said nothing to anyone about it. She waited for the arrival of her children. Katherine, Henry and Mildred came, and at last it seemed that Mrs. Trenchard’s ship had come into port. During their early years, at any rate, they clung to her tenaciously, did not in the least mind that she had nothing to say to them: they found her sure and safe and, best of all possible things in a parent, always the same. It was when Katherine was six years old that Timothy said to her one day: “Look here, Harriet, don’t get so wrapt in the children that you’ll never be able to unwrap yourself again. I’ve seen it happen dozens of times, and it always gives endless trouble later on. It’s all very well now, but the time will come when they’ll break away—it _must_ come, and you’ll suffer horribly unless you’re ready for it. I’m not married myself, it’s true, but I see all the more for that very reason.”