ween them, a remark of hers showed how far
their thoughts had travelled apart, and he had rebelled against the
unsurmountable wall which seemed to divide every personality from every
other. He found it strangely tragic that he had loved her so madly and now
loved her not at all. Sometimes he hated her. She was incapable of
learning, and the experience of life had taught her nothing. She was as
unmannerly as she had always been. It revolted Philip to hear the
insolence with which she treated the hard-worked servant at the
boarding-house.

Presently he considered his own plans. At the end of his fourth year he
would be able to take his examination in midwifery, and a year more would
see him qualified. Then he might manage a journey to Spain. He wanted to
see the pictures which he knew only from photographs; he felt deeply that
El Greco held a secret of peculiar moment to him; and he fancied that in
Toledo he would surely find it out. He did not wish to do things grandly,
and on a hundred pounds he might live for six months in Spain: if
Macalister put him on to another good thing he could make that easily. His
heart warmed at the thought of those old beautiful cities, and the tawny
plains of Castile. He was convinced that more might be got out of life
than offered itself at present, and he thought that in Spain he could live
with greater intensity: it might be possible to practise in one of those
old cities, there were a good many foreigners, passing or resident, and he
should be able to pick up a living. But that would be much later; first he
must get one or two hospital appointments; they gave experience and made
it easy to get jobs afterwards. He wished to get a berth as ship's doctor
on one of the large tramps that took things leisurely enough for a man to
see something of the places at which they stopped. He wanted to go to the
East; and his fancy was rich with pictures of Bangkok and Shanghai, and
the ports of Japan: he pictured to himself palm-trees and skies blue and
hot, dark-skinned people, pagodas; the scents of the Orient intoxicated
his nostrils. His heart but with passionate desire for the beauty and the
strangeness of the world.

Mildred awoke.

"I do believe I've been asleep," she said. "Now then, you naughty girl,
what have you been doing to yourself? Her dress was clean yesterday and
just look at it now, Philip."

XCV

When they returned to London Philip began his dressing in the surgical
ward