But that evening, about eleven o'clock, all his fears and shynesses were over, and he felt the most deeply contented man in the world. A fire was flickering a cheerful glow over the tiny drawing-room; Helen had complained of chilliness so he had told Burton to light it. He was glad now that this had been done, for it enabled him to grapple with his dreams more comfortably. Helen sat in an armchair opposite to him on the other side of the fire; she was leaning forward with her head on her hands, so that the firelight shone wonderfully on her hair. He looked at her from time to time, magnificently in love with her, and always amazed that she belonged to him. The long day of ordeals had passed by. He had dined that evening in the Masters' Common-Room, and everybody there had pressed round him in a chorus of eager congratulation. Afterwards he had toured his House, introducing himself to those of the prefects whom he had not already met, and strolling round the dormitories to shake hands informally with the rank and file. Then he had interviewed new boys (there were nineteen of them), and had distributed a few words of pastoral advice, concluding with the strict injunction that if they made tea in the basements they were on no account to throw the slops down the waste-pipes of the baths. Lastly of all, he had put his head inside each of the dormitories, at about half-past ten, to bestow a brisk but genial good-night. So now, at eleven o'clock, rooted at last in everything that he most loved in the world, he could pause to gloat over his happiness. Here, in the snug firelit room, secret and rich with warm shadows; and there, down the short corridor into the bleak emptiness of the classrooms, was everything that his heart desired: Helen and Millstead: the two deities that held passionate sway over him.--Eleven began to chime on the school clock. The dormitories above were almost silent. She did not speak, did not look up once from the redness of the fire; she was often like that, silent with thoughts whose nature he could guess from the dark, tossing passion that shook her sometimes when, in the midst of such silences, she suddenly clung to him. She loved him more than ever he could have imagined: that, more perhaps than anything else, had been the surprise of that month in Cornwall. "Eleven," he said, breaking the rapt silence. She said, half humorously, half sadly: "Are you pleased with me?--Are you satisfied?--Do I quite come up to expectations?" He started, looked towards her, and laughed. The laugh disturbed the silence of the room like the intrusion of something from millions of miles away. He made a humorous pretence of puzzling it out, as if it were a baffling problem, and said, finally, with mocking doubtfulness: "Well, on the whole, I think you do." "If I had been on trial for a month you'd still keep me, then?" she went on, without moving her head out of her hands.