He had not wished to see Halo again—not for some time, not till the storm in him should subside. Had she been right when she had warned him the other night not to "spoil something perfect"? In his unsatisfied anguish, he had half believed her; but in the interval he had come to know that this anguish was worth all the rest. Friendship—love? How vain such restricting words now seemed! In reality, his feeling for her included friendship, passion, love, desire, whatever thought or emotion, craving of sight and touch, a woman can excite in a man. All were merged in a rich deep communion; it was the element in which everything else in him lived. "All thoughts, all motions, all delights, Whatever stirs this mortal frame—" the poet whom Elinor Lorburn loved had summed it up long ago… .

When he got to Mrs. Spear's the maid showed him into a little study. The room was so small that it made his grandmother, who was waiting there, seem immense, like a great spreading idol. But she managed to get to her feet; her arms engulfed him; he sank into her warmth as into a tepid sea. If he'd been a child he would have burst out crying, she smelt so like home and the Mapledale Avenue soap!

"Oh, Vanny, Vanny—my little Vance … this is God's Hand," she said, and hugged him.

He thought, with a quick recoil: "She wouldn't have dragged God in that way, in old times—" and suddenly heard an emotional murmur at his back, and became aware that his grandmother, as she clasped him, had seen Mrs. Spear enter the room.

Vance's recoil was only momentary; yet the impression left a faint smirch on the freshness of Mrs. Scrimser's spontaneity. She had become a prophetess now, conscious of her audience.

"Dear Mrs. Scrimser, you'll forgive me? I felt I must see the meeting between you two!" Mrs. Spear sighed out with eloquent eyes and a hand affectionately extended to Vance.

But already there were sounds of arrival in the hall; the sense of the little apartment becoming more and more packed with people; the door of the study opening to admit Saidie Toler, straight and colourless as usual, and accompanied by a large battered blonde, Mrs. Lotus Mennenkoop, who declared emotionally that she must see Vance before the speaker took her place on the platform… .