y put between their own exalted
rank and that of the farmers. The doctor had two daughters, but they were
both much older than Philip and had been married to successive assistants
while Philip was still a small boy. At school there had been two or three
girls of more boldness than modesty whom some of the boys knew; and
desperate stories, due in all probability to the masculine imagination,
were told of intrigues with them; but Philip had always concealed under a
lofty contempt the terror with which they filled him. His imagination and
the books he had read had inspired in him a desire for the Byronic
attitude; and he was torn between a morbid self-consciousness and a
conviction that he owed it to himself to be gallant. He felt now that he
should be bright and amusing, but his brain seemed empty and he could not
for the life of him think of anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau
Professor's daughter, addressed herself to him frequently from a sense of
duty, but the other said little: she looked at him now and then with
sparkling eyes, and sometimes to his confusion laughed outright. Philip
felt that she thought him perfectly ridiculous. They walked along the side
of a hill among pine-trees, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen
delight. The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came to an eminence
from which they saw the valley of the Rhine spread out before them under
the sun. It was a vast stretch of country, sparkling with golden light,
with cities in the distance; and through it meandered the silver ribband
of the river. Wide spaces are rare in the corner of Kent which Philip
knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the immense distance he
saw now gave him a peculiar, an indescribable thrill. He felt suddenly
elated. Though he did not know it, it was the first time that he had
experienced, quite undiluted with foreign emotions, the sense of beauty.
They sat on a bench, the three of them, for the others had gone on, and
while the girls talked in rapid German, Philip, indifferent to their
proximity, feasted his eyes.

"By Jove, I am happy," he said to himself unconsciously.

XXIII

Philip thought occasionally of the King's School at Tercanbury, and
laughed to himself as he remembered what at some particular moment of the
day they were doing. Now and then he dreamed that he was there still, and
it gave him an extraordinary satisfaction, on awaking, to realise that he
was in his little room