The quarrel was quickly followed by a reconciliation, but the few days that remained were sometimes irksome to Philip.  He wanted to talk of nothing but the future, and the future invariably reduced Miss Wilkinson to tears.  At first her weeping affected him, and feeling himself a beast he redoubled his protestations of undying passion; but now it irritated him:  it would have been all very well if she had been a girl, but it was silly of a grown-up woman to cry so much.  She never ceased reminding him that he was under a debt of gratitude to her which he could never repay.  He was willing to acknowledge this since she made a point of it, but he did not really know why he should be any more grateful to her than she to him.  He was expected to show his sense of obligation in ways which were rather a nuisance:  he had been a good deal used to solitude, and it was a necessity to him sometimes; but Miss Wilkinson looked upon it as an unkindness if he was not always at her beck and call.  The Miss O’Connors asked them both to tea, and Philip would have liked to go, but Miss Wilkinson said she only had five days more and wanted him entirely to herself.  It was flattering, but a bore.  Miss Wilkinson told him stories of the exquisite delicacy of Frenchmen when they stood in the same relation to fair ladies as he to Miss Wilkinson.  She praised their courtesy, their passion for self-sacrifice, their perfect tact.  Miss Wilkinson seemed to want a great deal.

Philip listened to her enumeration of the qualities which must be possessed by the perfect lover, and he could not help feeling a certain satisfaction that she lived in Berlin.

“You will write to me, won’t you?  Write to me every day.  I want to know everything you’re doing.  You must keep nothing from me.”

“I shall be awfully, busy” he answered.  “I’ll write as often as I can.”

She flung her arms passionately round his neck.  He was embarrassed sometimes by the demonstrations of her affection.  He would have preferred her to be more passive.  It shocked him a little that she should give him so marked a lead:  it did not tally altogether with his prepossessions about the modesty of the feminine temperament.

At length the day came on which Miss Wilkinson was to go, and she came down to breakfast, pale and subdued, in a serviceable travelling dress of black and white check.  She looked a very competent governess.  Philip was silent too, for he did not quite know what to say that would fit the circumstance; and he was terribly afraid that, if he said something flippant, Miss Wilkinson would break down before his uncle and make a scene.  They had said their last good-bye to one another in the garden the night before, and Philip was relieved that there was now no opportunity for them to be alone.  He remained in the dining-room after breakfast in case Miss Wilkinson should insist on kissing him on the stairs.  He did not want Mary Ann, now a woman hard upon middle age with a sharp tongue, to catch them in a compromising position.  Mary Ann did not like Miss Wilkinson and called her an old cat.  Aunt Louisa was not very well and could not come to the station, but the Vicar and Philip saw her off.  Just as the train was leaving she leaned out and kissed Mr. Carey.