"Really, I don't suppose I shall ever go there again," he answered with a laugh. "Off with the old love, you know, Mr Neeld!" "Oh, don't say that," protested Southend. There was a hint of some meaning in his speech which made Harry turn to him with quick attention. "Blent's a mere memory to me," he declared. The three elder men were silent, but they seemed to receive what he said with scepticism. "Well, that's the only way, isn't it?" he asked. "Just at present, I suppose," Southend said to him in a low voice, as he shook hands. These few words, with the subdued hint they carried, reinforced the strength of the visions. Harry was rather full of his own will and proud of his own powers just now--perhaps with some little excuse. But he began, thanks to the bearing of these men and to the obstinate thoughts of his own mind, to feel, still dimly, that it was a difficult thing to forget and to get rid of the whole of a life, to make an entirely fresh start, to be quite a different man. Unsuspected chains revealed themselves with each new motion toward liberty. Absolute detachment had been his ideal. He awoke with a start to the fact that he was still, in the main, living with and moving among people who smacked strong of Blent, who had known him as Tristram of Blent, whose lives had crossed his because he was Addie Tristram's son. That was true of even his new acquaintance Lady Evenswood--truer still of Neeld, of Southend, aye, of Sloyd and the Major--most true of his cousin Cecily. This interdependence of its periods is what welds life into a whole; even able and wilful young men have, for good and evil, to reckon with it. Otherwise morality would be in a bad case, and even logic rather at sea. The disadvantage is that the difficulties in the way of heroic or dramatic conduct are materially increased. Yes, he was not to escape, not to forget. That day one scene more awaited him which rose out of Blent and belonged to Blent. The Imp made an appointment by telegram, and the Imp came. Harry could no longer regard his bachelor-chambers as any barrier against the incursions of excited young women. Anything that concerned the Tristrams seemed naturally antipathetic to conventions. He surrendered and let Mina in; that he wanted to see her--her for want of a better--was not recognized by him. She was in a great temper, and he was soon inclined to regret his accessibility. Still he endured; for it was an absolutely final interview, she said. She had just come to tell him what she thought of him--and there was an end of it. Then she was going back to Merrion and she hoped Cecily was coming with her. He--Harry--would not be there anyhow! "Certainly not," he agreed. "But what's the matter, Madame Zabriska? You don't complain that I didn't accept--that I couldn't fall in with my cousin's peculiar ideas?" "Oh, you can't get out of it like that! You know that isn't the point."