He sighed, and went on his way, under the wonderful night. He climbed the steep slope of Mawne Bank, under the smouldering pit-fires, in a dream, and found himself, surprised, beneath the walls of the cherry orchard at the back of Old Mawne Hall. Inside the walls the cherry-trees lay locked in a wintry sleep. He stopped, for the steepness of the hill had stolen his breath. He remembered a day when he walked there with his mother. “How mother would have loved her!” he thought. Yes . . . she was more wonderful than his mother. On the day that he remembered, so many years ago, it had been spring. The branches had been full of billowy bloom. Now, in the wintry night, he felt that spring was near: spring was in his blood, stirring it to new and passionate aspirations as in a few months time it would stir the dreamy sap of the cherry-trees. A strange, unseasonable miracle. Glorious, indefinite words formed themselves in his mind. Spring, with its warm, perfumed breath, triumphing beautifully over the powers of winter and death. Death at Colenso under those tawny kopjes. Love in his heart. A sublime, ecstatic muddle. . . . The Mawne furnaces leapt into a sudden flower of fire that made the sky above them tawny. Love was like fire . . . an exultant leaping flame. He did not know where he was going until he found himself at home in his little shabby room taking off his dress-suit and staring at himself as a stranger in the dusty mirror. “Who am I?” he thought, “that this should have happened to me? I do not know myself. I am greater and more wonderful than the image that I see in the glass.” He placed his precious talisman of muslin under his pillow, and wondered if he might be blessed with a dream of her. “She kissed me,” he thought. “She kissed my lips—” III It was evident that if he were to see her again he must make friends with Edward Willis. He was sorry that he had not done so before. For once in a way the recommendations of Aunt Laura had been prophetically right. His self-consciousness made it difficult for him to do so, for he felt certain that this cold, calculating young man would see through him. For two days he debated with himself on the various ways in which Mawne might be approached without coming to any satisfactory conclusion. On the third he was so lucky as to meet his victim on the Halesby train. Willis did not seem in the least anxious to renew their acquaintance; and it was at the expense of some awkwardness that Edwin managed to drag him into conversation. They talked a little about the war, which Willis seemed to view from a remote and pessimistic angle. From that, by way of Mr. Willis’s Ladysmith rumour, they passed on to a discussion of the dance. Edwin was enthusiastic. “I’m glad you enjoyed yourself,” said Willis. “I hate dancing.” “I rather admired that Miss Powys,” said Edwin. “Dorothy Powys? Yes, she’s a pretty girl, isn’t she?” “Who is she?”