Alan pointed out to her the many
practical difficulties, amounting almost to impossibilities, which
beset such a course; and Herminia, though it was hateful to her thus
to yield to the immoral prejudices of a false social system, gave
way at last to Alan's repeated expression of the necessity for
prudent and practical action. She would go with him to Italy, she
said, as a proof of her affection and her confidence in his
judgment, though she still thought the right thing was to stand by
her guns fearlessly, and fight it out to the bitter end undismayed
in England.

On the morning of their departure, Alan called to see his father,
and explain the situation. He felt some explanation was by this
time necessary. As yet no one in London knew anything officially
as to his relations with Herminia; and for Herminia's sake, Alan
had hitherto kept them perfectly private. But now, further
reticence was both useless and undesirable; he determined to make a
clean breast of the whole story to his father. It was early for a
barrister to be leaving town for the Easter vacation; and though
Alan had chambers of his own in Lincoln's Inn, where he lived by
himself, he was so often in and out of the house in Harley Street
that his absence from London would at once have attracted the
parental attention.

Dr. Merrick was a model of the close-shaven clear-cut London
consultant. His shirt-front was as impeccable as his moral
character was spotless--in the way that Belgravia and Harley Street
still understood spotlessness. He was tall and straight, and
unbent by age; the professional poker which he had swallowed in
early life seemed to stand him in good stead after sixty years,
though his hair had whitened fast, and his brow was furrowed with
most deliberative wrinkles. So unapproachable he looked, that not
even his own sons dared speak frankly before him. His very smile
was restrained; he hardly permitted himself for a moment that weak
human relaxation.

Alan called at Harley Street immediately after breakfast, just a
quarter of an hour before the time allotted to his father's first
patient. Dr. Merrick received him in the consulting-room with an
interrogative raising of those straight, thin eyebrows. The mere
look on his face disconcerted Alan. With an effort the son began
and explained his errand. His father settled himself down into his
ample and dignified professional chair--old oak round-backed,--and
with head half turned