"Is there such a thing as an absolute liking, Lady Evenswood? What's pleasant at one time is abomi
nable at another. And I've known Madame Zabriska at the other time."
"You were probably at the other time yourself."
"I thought we should agree about the relativity!"
"There may always be a substratum of friendship," she argued. "You'll say it's sometimes very sub! Ah, well, you're human in the end. You're absolutely forgetting Blent—and you spend your time with an old woman because she can talk to you about it! Go away and arrange your life, and come back and tell me all about it. And if you're discontented with life, remember that you too will reach the stage of being just told about it some day."
Things will come home to a man at last, strive he never so desperately against them—if the things are true and the man ever honest with himself. It was one night, a little while after this conversation, that the truth came to Harry Tristram and found acceptance or at least surrender. His mind had wandered back to that scene in the Long Gallery, and he had fallen to questioning about his own action. There was a new light on it, and the new light showed him truth. "I must face it; it's not Blent," he said aloud. If it were Blent, it was now Blent only as a scene, a frame, a background. When he pictured Blent, Cecily was there; if he thought of her elsewhere, the picture of Blent vanished. He was in love with her then; and what was the quality that Lady Evenswood had praised in a lover? Let him cultivate it how he would—and the culture would be difficult—yet it would not serve here. If he went to Blent against Cecily's commands and his own promise, he could meet with nothing but a rebuff. Yes, he was in love; and he recognized the impasse as fully as Mina herself, although with more self-restraint. But he was glad to know the truth; it strengthened him, and it freed him from a scorn of
himself with which he had become afflicted. It was intolerable that a man should be love-sick for a house; it was some solace to find that the house, in order to hold his affections, must hold a woman too.
"Now I know where I am," said Harry. He knew what he had to meet now; he thought he knew how he could treat himself. He went down to Blinkhampton the next morning, harried his builder out of a holiday expedition, and got a useful bit of work in hand. It was, he supposed, inevitable that Cecily should journey with him in the spirit to Blinkhampton; he flattered himself that she got very little chance while he was there. She was the enemy, he declared, with a half-peevish half-humorous smile. It was not altogether without amusement to invent all manner of devices and all sorts of occupations to evade and elude her. He ventured to declare—following the precedents—that she had treated him shamefully. That broke down. Candor insisted once again on his admitting that he himself would have done exactly the same thing. It never occurred to him to regret, even for a moment, that he had not taken her at her word, and had not accepted her offer. That would have been to spoil his dream, not to realize it. He asked perfection or nothing, being still unhealed of that presumptuous way of his, which bade the world go hang if it would not give him exactly what he chose. The Tristram motto was still, "No compromise!"
An unexpected ally came to his assistance. He received a sudden summons from Mr Disney. He found him at work, rather weary and dishevelled. He let Harry in at once, but kept him waiting while he transacted some other business. Here was the place to see him, not in a drawing-room; his brusque words and quick decisions enabled him to do two men's work. He turned to Harry and said without preface: