Then, one day, about three weeks after they had come back to London as they walked together, he noticed that she was unusually silent.  The serenity of her expression was altered by a slight line between the eyebrows:  it was the beginning of a frown.

“What’s the matter, Sally?” he asked.

She did not look at him, but straight in front of her, and her colour darkened.

“I don’t know.”

He understood at once what she meant.  His heart gave a sudden, quick beat, and he felt the colour leave his cheeks.

“What d’you mean?  Are you afraid that... ?”

He stopped.  He could not go on.  The possibility that anything of the sort could happen had never crossed his mind.  Then he saw that her lips were trembling, and she was trying not to cry.

“I’m not certain yet.  Perhaps it’ll be all right.”

They walked on in silence till they came to the corner of Chancery Lane, where he always left her.  She held out her hand and smiled.

“Don’t worry about it yet.  Let’s hope for the best.”

He walked away with a tumult of thoughts in his head.  What a fool he had been!  That was the first thing that struck him, an abject, miserable fool, and he repeated it to himself a dozen times in a rush of angry feeling.  He despised himself.  How could he have got into such a mess?  But at the same time, for his thoughts chased one another through his brain and yet seemed to stand together, in a hopeless confusion, like the pieces of a jig-saw puzzle seen in a nightmare, he asked himself what he was going to do.  Everything was so clear before him, all he had aimed at so long within reach at last, and now his inconceivable stupidity had erected this new obstacle.  Philip had never been able to surmount what he acknowledged was a defect in his resolute desire for a well ordered life, and that was his passion for living in the future; and no sooner was he settled in his work at the hospital than he had busied himself with arrangements for his travels.  In the past he had often tried not to think too circumstantially of his plans for the future, it was only discouraging; but now that his goal was so near he saw no harm in giving away to a longing that was so difficult to resist.  First of all he meant to go to Spain.  That was the land of his heart; and by now he was imbued with its spirit, its romance and colour and history and grandeur; he felt that it had a message for him in particular which no other country could give.  He knew the fine old cities already as though he had trodden their tortuous streets from childhood.  Cordova, Seville, Toledo, Leon, Tarragona, Burgos.  The great painters of Spain were the painters of his soul, and his pulse beat quickly as he pictured his ecstasy on standing face to face with those works which were more significant than any others to his own tortured, restless heart.  He had read the great poets, more characteristic of their race