He should not have done so--that was too certain. When he felt it coming on, when she jumped into his mind like that, without rhyme or reason, he ought to have shut the door sternly against her, he ought to have betaken himself to some matter of professional difficulty of the hardest possible sort; he should have devoted himself to the Euphrates Canal or the St. Gothard Tunnel. Or if he had wanted something nearer home there was the great subject which had already occupied him for years, and which we may call the drainage of the Thames valley--which is a thing waiting to be done, and by which some engineer, and perhaps John, might yet distinguish himself. He was aware that he ought to do this, but he did not. Instead of engaging in a course of thought which would have been both laudable and useful, he thought of Elly and nothing else--nothing but Elly, as he walked for hours across the common and to every village in the neighbourhood. Susie, who had not fathomed his difficulties, thought these long walks very good for him. She could not herself walk so far, but she had always heard that exercise was the first necessity for a man, so that, instead of opposing, as she ought to have done, she encouraged him for the good of his health, and because his holidays would soon be over, to walk and think--of Elly--though she did not know anything of this latter exercise. Percy’s interrupted remonstrances of the previous night, which he had understood well enough, as he had foreseen all the time that they were coming, quickened to an almost incalculable extent the current of John’s thoughts. It gave them a swing and energy which they had never had before. He had known very well it was coming! From the beginning he had been aware that things could not go on on this present footing, that some change there must be; he had foreseen it dimly when Percy said ‘my sister,’ that the familiar name, the child’s name, might not be given over to John’s lips. How well he had perceived that! He had even, as he now remembered, made an effort to obey. He had tried to set things straight, to call her Miss Spencer, to treat the old childish intimacy as a thing of the past, if Elly would have allowed it to be so. But she had not allowed it; she would not suffer it; and now? What was to be done? for something would have to be done. Even if there were no Percy in the world, no watchful aunt, all this would have to be altered somehow. The course of their history could not go on as it was going now. His thoughts quickened as he pushed on and on for many a flying mile. He walked, not seeing where he went, the landscape spinning past him as if he were travelling in an express train. Things could not go on as they were going now. Either all this whirling world of passion and excitement must go back and be stilled and relapse into the former calm, the easy boy and girl friendship, that relation which was entirely of