He did not cycle into the town, but along the winding Millstead lane that led away from the houses and into the uplands around Parminters. The sun was glorious and warm, and the trees of that deep and heavy green that had not, so far, more than the faintest of autumnal tints in it. Along the lane twisting into the cleft of Parminters, memories assailed him at every yard. He had been so happy here--and here--and here; here he had laughed loudly at something she had said; here she had made one of her childish yet incomparably wise remarks. Those old serene days, those splendid flaming afternoons of the summer term, had been so sweet and exquisite and fragrantly memorable to him that he could not forbear to wonder if anything could ever be so lovely again. Deep down beneath all the self-consciousness and apprehension and morbid researching of the past, he knew that he was richly and abundantly happy. He knew that she was still a child in his own mind; that life with her was dream-like as had been the rapt anticipation of it; that the dream, so far from marriage dispelling it, was enhanced by all the kindling intimacies that swung them both, as it were, into the same ethereal orbit. When he thought about it he came to the conclusion that their marriage must be the most wonderful marriage in the world. She was a child, a strange, winsome fairy-child, streaked with the most fitful and sombre passion that he had ever known. Nobody, perhaps, would guess that he and she were man and wife. The thought gratified his sense of the singularity of what had happened. At the Cornish hotel where they had stayed he had fancied that their identity as a honeymoon couple had not been guessed at all; he had thought, with many an inward chuckle, that people were supposing them to be mysteriously and romantically unwedded. Time passed so slowly on that first day of the winter term. He rode back at the end of the afternoon with the wind behind him, swinging him in through the main gateway where he could see the windows of Lavery's pink in the rays of the setting sun. Lavery's!--Lavery's!--Throughout the day he had found himself repeating the name constantly, until the syllables lost all shred of meaning. Lavery's!--Lav-er-izz.... The sounds boomed in his ears as he entered the tiny drawing-room in which Helen was waiting for him with the tea almost ready. Tea time!--In a few hours the great machine of Millstead would have begun to pound its inexorable way. He felt, listening to the chiming of the quarters, as if he were standing in the engine-room of an ocean liner, watching the mighty shafts, now silent and motionless, that would so soon begin their solemn crashing movement.