He was glad that the term was nearly over, not, he told himself, because he was unhappy at Millstead, but because he needed a holiday after the hard work of his first term of housemastership. The next term, he decided, would be easier; and the term after that easier still, and so on, until a time would come when his work at Millstead would be exactly the ideal combination of activity and comfort. Moreover, the next term he would not see Clare at all. He had made up his mind about that It would be easier to see her not at all than to see her only a little. And with the absolute snapping of his relations with her would come that which he desired most in all the world; happiness with Helen. He wanted to be happy with Helen. He wanted to love her passionately, just as he wanted to hate Clare passionately. For it was Clare who had caused all the trouble. He hugged the comfortable thought to himself; it was Clare, and Clare only, who had so far disturbed the serenity of his world. Without Clare his world would have been calm and unruffled, a paradise of contentment and love of Helen. Well, next term, anyway, his world should be without Clare. IV On the day that term ended he felt quite boyish and cheerful. For during that final week he and Helen had been, he considered, perfectly happy; moreover, she had agreed to go with him to his parents for Christmas, and though the visit would, in some sense, be an ordeal, the anticipation of it was distinctly pleasant. Somehow--he would not analyse his sensation exactly--somehow he wanted to leave the creeper-hung rooms at Lavery's and charge full tilt into the world outside; it was as if Lavery's contained something morbidly beautiful that he loved achingly, but desired to leave in order that he might return to love it more and again. When he saw the railway vans being loaded up with luggage in the courtyard he felt himself tingling with excitement, just as if he were a schoolboy and this the close of his first miserable term. Miserable! Well, yes, looking back upon it he could agree that in a certain way it had been miserable, and in another way it had been splendid, rapturous, and lovely. It had been full, brimming full, of _feelings_. The feelings had whirled tirelessly about him in the dark drawing-room, had wrapped him amidst themselves, had tossed him high and low to the most dizzy heights and the most submerged depths; and now, aching from it all, he was not sorry to leave for a short while this world of pressing, congesting sensation.