a transient form of _idee fixe_, and he had behaved
very foolishly in playing fairy-godfather to a dear little girl. But at
this relegating phrase his sense of humour rose to mock him. He could
not relegate Karen Woodruff as a dear little girl. It was he who had
behaved like a boy, while she had maintained the calm simplicities of
the mature. He hadn't the faintest right to hope that she saw anything
in his correspondence but what she had herself brought to it. Fear fell
more strongly upon him. He sat down to his breakfast, his thoughts in
inextricable confusion. And while he drank his coffee and glanced
nervously down the columns of his newspaper, a hundred little filaments
of memory ran back and linked the beginning to the present. It had not
been so sudden. It had been there beside him, in him; and he had not
seen it. The meeting of their eyes in the long, grave interchange at the
concert had been full of presage. And why had he gone to tea at Mrs.
Forrester's? And why, above all why, had he dreamed that dream? It was
his real self who had felt no surprise when, at the edge of the forest,
she had said: "And I love you." The words had been spoken in answer to
his love.

Gregory laid down his paper and stared before him. He was in love.
Should he get over it? Did he want to get over it? Was it possible to
get over it if he did want to? And, this was the culmination, would she
have him? These questions drove him forth.

When Barker, his man, came to clear away the breakfast things he found
that the bacon and eggs had not been eaten. Barker was a stone-grey
personage who looked like a mid-Victorian Liberal statesman. His gravity
often passed into an air of despondent responsibility. "Mr. Jardine
hasn't eaten his breakfast," he said to his wife, who was Gregory's
cook. "It's this engagement of Miss Armytage's. He was more taken with
her than we'd thought."

Gregory had intended to motor down to Cornwall, still a rare opportunity
in those days; a friend who was going abroad had placed his car at his
disposal. But he sent the car ahead of him and, on the first day of his
freedom, started by train. Next day he motored over to the little
village near the Lizard.

It was a pale, crystalline Spring day. From heights, where the car
seemed to poise like a bird in mid-air, one saw the tranquil blue of the
sea. The woods were veiled in young green and the hedges thickly starred
with blackthorn. Over the great Goonhilly Downs a