"Have another storm then," she counselled. She laid a hand on his arm. "Go to Blent." "As things stand, I can never go to Blent, I can go only to--Blinkhampton." "What does little Mina Zabriska say to that?" "Oh, everything that comes into her head, I suppose, and very volubly." "I like her," said the old lady with emphasis. "Is there such a thing as an absolute liking, Lady Evenswood? What's pleasant at one time is abominable at another. And I've known Madame Zabriska at the other time." "You were probably at the other time yourself." "I thought we should agree about the relativity!" "There may always be a substratum of friendship," she argued. "You'll say it's sometimes very _sub_! Ah, well, you're human in the end. You're absolutely forgetting Blent--and you spend your time with an old woman because she can talk to you about it! Go away and arrange your life, and come back and tell me all about it. And if you're discontented with life, remember that you too will reach the stage of being just told about it some day." Things will come home to a man at last, strive he never so desperately against them--if the things are true and the man ever honest with himself. It was one night, a little while after this conversation, that the truth came to Harry Tristram and found acceptance or at least surrender. His mind had wandered back to that scene in the Long Gallery, and he had fallen to questioning about his own action. There was a new light on it, and the new light showed him truth. "I must face it; it's not Blent," he said aloud. If it were Blent, it was now Blent only as a scene, a frame, a background. When he pictured Blent, Cecily was there; if he thought of her elsewhere, the picture of Blent vanished. He was in love with her then; and what was the quality that Lady Evenswood had praised in a lover? Let him cultivate it how he would--and the culture would be difficult--yet it would not serve here. If he went to Blent against Cecily's commands and his own promise, he could meet with nothing but a rebuff. Yes, he was in love; and he recognized the _impasse_ as fully as Mina herself, although with more self-restraint. But he was glad to know the truth; it strengthened him, and it freed him from a scorn of himself with which he had become afflicted. It was intolerable that a man should be love-sick for a house; it was some solace to find that the house, in order to hold his affections, must hold a woman too.