And then he remembered another incident in the gloom of that brown room at the Holloway on the windy crown of Mendip, whence he had seen all the kingdoms of the earth. Thinking of this, he seemed to hear the voice of a very old woman, who said, “The Inglebys are always very tender in marriage. I’ve seen many of them that have lost their wives, and they always marry again.” How could she have known? And then the thought of a strange woman in the house, treading in the places where his mother’s steps had once moved, swept him off his feet again. “I could never stay here,” he thought. “I could never stay here. . . . I should do something desperate and cruel and unreasonable. I couldn’t help myself. I must go. It’s a pity . . . but I must go. I couldn’t stay here. I simply couldn’t.” With this determination in his mind, but without the least idea of the way in which it might be realised, he arrived at a state of comparative serenity, in which he could contemplate his mother’s photograph without so much passionate resentment at the slur that was being laid on her memory. Now he saw everything in terms of his new resolution. He saw, pathetically, the little bed in which he had slept for so many years, the shelves on which his favourite books were ranged, the piano and the sheaves of his mother’s music that he had managed to install in his room: all the small details that went together to create its atmosphere of homeliness. “How the devil shall I manage to leave them?” he thought. He went to the window and saw, beyond the garden trees, the low line of those familiar hills: the landscape that he had always delighted in as his own, and that now was to be his no longer. He sighed, for to leave them seemed to him impossible; they were so familiar, so much a definite part of his life. A curious impulse seized him to creep downstairs and out of the house, and visit the grave in the cemetery where his mother was laid; but he restrained himself from this debauch of sentiment. “It will do no good,” he thought. “It’s all over.” He even wondered if he might feel happier if he went down to Aunt Laura’s house and confided in her: perhaps she would understand. At least she was his mother’s sister and might be conscious of the indignity; but when he had almost determined to do this, he reflected that she and his uncle were probably in bed, and a ludicrous picture of her putting her head out of the window to ask what was the matter, with her hair in curling pins, restrained him. Besides, it would be rather ridiculous to fall back upon the sympathies of a person whom he had neglected for several years. “No. . . . I must go on my own way,” he thought. “It’s a sort of break in my life, just like the big break before. It’s got to be faced, and it’s no good worrying about it.”