At this same moment an elderly gentleman who had a daughter was thinking how touchingly young and inexperienced his fellow-traveller looked; in his old heart he felt sorry for her, somehow, for being so young. "I have weighed and measured everything," she said. "God is real, God lasts, and the love of Him. Human passion passes away. One might almost say that it does not exist. It is like a physical pain: it tortures, you try to locate it, you fix your mind upon the presumed seat of it--it is not there, there is no pain; and presently, when you are well, you cannot call up a remembrance of the sensation. I feel fitted to write a book on this subject. I thought I could never endure my life without Damon--dear, dear Damon! Yet I live and am improved in health. And, blinded by I shall never be able to explain what mist, I was beginning to adapt my mind to the thought of life with Demetrius, whom I pictured out of all proportion happy and grateful to me. Why more grateful than another? Thank God I was delivered from committing such a blunder! Ah, if I could teach Chloe all that I have learned! But she does not need it; she gets what she wants, for beyond a doubt Demetrius in time goes back to her. I--I am armed now at every point. I have a defence against every circumstance. The secret is: Nothing matters, but God above. And, knowing this, I mean to be very sweet to all at home, more thoughtful of every one, more generous of all myself--" She was running between familiar orchards and fields; the image of reaching home became very present, and a sweetness pervaded her rising excitement at the thought of touching so soon the home-hands. The mountains were thrown back to the horizon of her mind. Between the sandy hummocks, beyond the level salt meadows which she had left green and found russet, she caught glimpses of a great sapphire line. She began looking eagerly for the farm-house that meant she was within a minute of her journey's end. It flashed past. She gathered up her things; she came out on the platform, and with a joyous heart looked for her father's gray face and his hand extended to help her down. He was not there, and she got off the train alone, half-conscious of a dog-cart not far, with a horse behaving as a horse should not at the locomotive. The superbly indifferent iron monster puffed off, dragging after it its train; the indignant horse quieted down. She heard her name called; the voice was the man's in the dog-cart, it was Damon's. The philosopher hurried towards him with an insanely beating heart, an uplifted, greeting, beaming face.