To see his own susceptibility so plainly was, he told himself, to be safe from it; not safe from its pang, perhaps, but safe from its power, and that was the essential thing. It was not to Eppie, as he further assured himself, that he was susceptible. Eppie stood for life, personified its appeals; he could feel, yet be unmoved, by all life’s blandishments. Meanwhile on a very different plane--the after all remote plane of mental encounters and skirmishes--he felt, with relief, that he was entirely master of his own meaning. There were many of these skirmishes, and though he did not believe any of them planned, believe that she was carrying out her threat of conscious attack, he was aware that she was alert and inquisitive, and dexterously quick at taking any occasion that offered for further penetration. The first of these occasions was on Sunday evening when, after tea and in the gloaming, they sat together in the deep window-seat of one of the library windows and listened to Miss Barbara softly touching the chords of a hymn on the plaintive old piano and softly singing--a most unobtrusive accompaniment, at her distance and with her softness, for any talk or any thoughts of theirs. They had talked very little, watching the sunset burn itself out over the frosty moorland, and Gavan presently, while he listened, closed his eyes and leaned his head back upon the oak recess. Eppie, looking now from the sunset to him, observed him with an open, musing curiosity. His head, leaning back in the dusk, was like the ivory carving of a dead saint--a saint young, beautiful, at peace after long sorrow. Peace; that was the quality that his whole being expressed, though, with opened eyes, his face had the more human look of patience, verging now and then on a quiet dejection that would overspread his features like a veil. In boyhood, the peace, the placid dejection, had not been there; his face then had shown the tension of struggle and endurance. “Till in the ocean of thy love We lose ourselves in heaven above,” Miss Barbara quavered, and Gavan, opening his eyes at the closing cadence, found Eppie’s bent upon him. He smiled, and looked still more, she thought, the sad saint, all benediction and indifference, and an impulse of antagonism to such sainthood made her say, though smiling back, “How I dislike those words.” “Do you?” said Gavan. “Hate them? Why, dear child?” asked Miss Barbara, who had heard through the sigh of her held-down pedal. “I don’t want to lose myself,” said Eppie. “But I didn’t mean that I wanted you to stop, Aunt Barbara. Do go on. I love to hear you sing, however much I disapprove of the words.” But Miss Barbara, clasping and unclasping her hands a little nervously, and evidently finding the moment too propitious to be passed over, backed as she was by an ally, rose and came to them. “That is the very point you are so mistaken about, dear. It’s the self, you know, that keeps us from love.”