He knew that it was not; and suddenly he was seized with the conviction that he would not go. It was as if, again, a voice outside him had informed him of the fact. But if there were no reason for his going there was as little for his remaining at Myrtle Forge; that was, so far as Ludowika Winscombe was concerned. He had been untouched by all that she had said; untouched except for a faint involuntary shiver as she had spoken of premonition. And that had vanished instantaneously. There was his duty in the counting house. But he was forced to admit to himself the insufficiency of that reason; it was too palpably false. He had not been moved by the intent of what she had said, but his imagination had been stirred, as if by the touch of delicate, pointed fingers, at her description of Court--a bed with a silk counterpane ... behind clipped greenery. He recalled the fan with its painted Villeggiatura, the naked, wanton loves. "Something different," she half repeated, with a sigh, an accent, of longing. Howat heard her with impatience; it was absurd to try to picture her tramping in the wilderness, breaking her way hour after hour through thorned underbrush, like Fanny Gilkan. She wouldn't progress a hundred yards in her unsteady pattens and fragile clothes. Suddenly the Italian servant appeared absolutely noiselessly at her side, speaking a ridiculous, oily gibberish. "At once," she replied. She turned to Howat. "My bed has been prepared. Are you going to-morrow?" "No," he answered awkwardly. She turned and left without further words. The servant walked behind her, resembling an unnatural shadow. The metallic clamour at the anvil rose and fell, diminished by the interposed bulk of the dwellings, ceaselessly forging the Penny iron, the Penny gold. He thought of himself as metal under the hammer; or rather ore at the furnace: he hadn't run clear in the casting; there were bubbles, bubbles and slag. Endless refinements--first the furnace and then the forge and then the metal. A contempt for the lesser degrees possessed him, for a flawed or clumsy forging, for weakness of the flesh, the fatality of easy surrender. An overwhelming, passionate emotion swept him to his feet, clenched his hands, filled him with a numbing desire to reach the last purification.