For some days a great indolence had enveloped¹ Mrs. Rylands, a lassitude of mind and body. She lay in bed now and thought over Philip’s letter, so bold, tumultuous, and alive in this shadowed peace. The sheets lay on her counterpane and seemed to emit faint echoes of riot and battle. Quite certainly that night he would have gone out raging into the garden and fought. What else could he have done? He would have rescued Vinciguerra violently. Men might have been killed perhaps and everything would have been different. Well, she was glad that had not happened. But his letter was good, quite good, and he would keep his word, she felt, and play to win his games as old Edensoke won his games, but with great ends in view and his soul alive. It was good, but for all that just now that letter fatigued² her and she made no attempt to read it over again once she was through with it. It was all right with Philip. For a time things must rest on that.

Life was a very pursuing thing. She recalled the figure of Sempack, so prone³ to fall into inactive poses, and how combative⁴ necessity, with a face singularly like Philip’s, was forcing its way through his reluctant and comprehensive wisdom. She loved Philip, she had instigated⁵ Philip to give himself to these storming purposive activities, but just now also there was a shadowy resentment⁶ that he drove her along the path she herself had indicated. In her present mood Philip’s energy blended in thought with the kicking, struggling energy within, behaving already like another Philip eager to get at issue with the world. She thought of her child still as It, and marvelled⁷ how little she had pictured its individuality or troubled about its outlook. She had questioned Mrs. McManus and learnt how widespread was this imaginative indifference⁸ of expectant mothers. She had had a few dreams of something infantile and

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