honest: I do not
believe it was that which decided me. Nor do I think it was because he
was Barbara's father. I never connected him, nor that good old soul,
his vulgar, homely wife, in any way with Barbara. To me she was a being
apart from all the world. Her true Parents! I should have sought them
rather amid the sacred groves of vanished lands, within the sky-domed
shrines of banished gods. There are instincts in us not easily
analysed, not to be explained by reason. I have always preferred the
finding--sometimes the losing--of my way according to the map, to the
surer and simpler method of vocal enquiry; working out a complicated
journey, and running the risk of never arriving at my destination,
by aid of a Continental Bradshaw, to putting myself into the hands
of courteous officials maintained and paid to assist the perplexed
traveller. Possibly a far-off progenitor of mine may have been some
morose "rogue" savage with untribal inclinations, living in his
cave apart, fashioning his own stone hammer, shaping his own flint
arrow-heads, shunning the merry war-dance, preferring to caper by
himself.

But now, having gained my own foothold, I could stretch out my hand
without fear of the movement being mistaken for appeal. I wrote to old
Hasluck; and almost by the next post received from him the friendliest
of notes. He told me Barbara had just returned from abroad, took it upon
himself to add that she also would be delighted to see me, and, as I
knew he would, threw his doors open to me.

Of my boyish passion for Barbara never had I spoken to a living soul,
nor do I think, excepting Barbara herself, had any ever guessed it. To
my mother, though she was very fond of her, Barbara was only a girl,
with charms but also with faults, concerning which my mother would
speak freely; hurting me, as one unwittingly might hurt a neophyte by
philosophical discussion of his newly embraced religion. Often, choosing
by preference late evening or the night, I would wander round and round
the huge red-brick house standing in its ancient garden on the top
of Stamford Hill; descending again into the noisome streets as one
returning to the world from praying at a shrine, purified, filled with
peace, all noble endeavour, all unselfish aims seeming within my grasp.

During Barbara's four years' absence my adoration had grown and
strengthened. Out of my memory of her my desire had evolved its ideal; a
being of my imagination, but by reason o