"We might meet" said Mr. Hancock, busily washing his hands and lifting them in the air to shake back his coat sleeves. Miriam listened from her corner behind the instrument cabinet, stupid with incredulity; he _could_ not be speaking of the lecture ... he must be ... he had meant all the time that he was going to be with her at the lecture. "... in the library at half past eight." "Oh yes" she replied casually. 3 To sit hearing the very best in the intellectual life of London, the very best science there was; the inner circle suddenly open ... the curious quiet happy laughter that went through the world with the idea of the breaking up of air and water and rays of light; the strange _love_ that came suddenly to them all in the object lesson classes at Banbury Park. That was to begin again ... but now not only books, not the strange heavenly difficult success of showing the children the things that had been found out; but the latest newest things from the men themselves--there would be an audience and a happy man with a lit face talking about things he had just found out. Even if one did not understand there would be that. Fancy Mr. Hancock being a member and always going and not talking about it ... at lunch. He must know an enormous number of things besides the wonders of dentistry and pottery and Japanese art. It was education ... a liberal education. It made up for only being able to say one was secretary to a dentist at a pound a week ... it sounded strange at the end of twelve years of education and five months in Germany and two teaching posts--to people who could not see how wonderful it was from the inside; and the strange meaning and rightness there was; there had been a meaning in Mr. Hancock from the beginning, a sort of meaning in her privilege of associating with fine rare people, so different to herself and yet coming one after another, like questions into her life, and staying until she understood ... somebody struggled all night with the angel ... I will not let thee go until thou bless me ... and there was some meaning--of course, meanings everywhere ... perhaps a person inside a life could always feel meanings ... or perhaps only those who had moved from one experience to another could get that curious feeling of a real self that stayed the same through thing after thing. 4