hilip had looked forward with apprehension to the day on which Mildred
was to be married; he was expecting an intolerable anguish; and it was
with relief that he got a letter from Hayward on Saturday morning to say
that he was coming up early on that very day and would fetch Philip to
help him to find rooms. Philip, anxious to be distracted, looked up a
time-table and discovered the only train Hayward was likely to come by; he
went to meet him, and the reunion of the friends was enthusiastic. They
left the luggage at the station, and set off gaily. Hayward
characteristically proposed that first of all they should go for an hour
to the National Gallery; he had not seen pictures for some time, and he
stated that it needed a glimpse to set him in tune with life. Philip for
months had had no one with whom he could talk of art and books. Since the
Paris days Hayward had immersed himself in the modern French versifiers,
and, such a plethora of poets is there in France, he had several new
geniuses to tell Philip about. They walked through the gallery pointing
out to one another their favourite pictures; one subject led to another;
they talked excitedly. The sun was shining and the air was warm.

"Let's go and sit in the Park," said Hayward. "We'll look for rooms after
luncheon."

The spring was pleasant there. It was a day upon which one felt it good
merely to live. The young green of the trees was exquisite against the
sky; and the sky, pale and blue, was dappled with little white clouds. At
the end of the ornamental water was the gray mass of the Horse Guards. The
ordered elegance of the scene had the charm of an eighteenth-century
picture. It reminded you not of Watteau, whose landscapes are so idyllic
that they recall only the woodland glens seen in dreams, but of the more
prosaic Jean-Baptiste Pater. Philip's heart was filled with lightness. He
realised, what he had only read before, that art (for there was art in the
manner in which he looked upon nature) might liberate the soul from pain.

They went to an Italian restaurant for luncheon and ordered themselves a
fiaschetto of Chianti. Lingering over the meal they talked on. They
reminded one another of the people they had known at Heidelberg, they
spoke of Philip's friends in Paris, they talked of books, pictures,
morals, life; and suddenly Philip heard a clock strike three. He
remembered that by this time Mildred was married. He felt a sort of stitch
in his heart, and