le, the sky black, and he had discovered a star-fish for
the first time (very young on that occasion); once when his horse had
run away with him and the danger had been exceeded by the glorious speed
through the air ... many, many others, all to be counted by him to their
very least detail, and now, of some of them, Rachel Beaminster was the
central figure.

He had had relations of many kinds with many different women and never
until now had he supposed, for an instant, that these relations would be
permanent. Even now, although he was intending to marry Rachel
Beaminster, he was not so foolish as to imagine that the freshness and
novelty of the feeling that he now had for her would last more than a
very short time.

Quite deliberately he treasured up in his mind a thousand pictures of
her, as he had seen her during the last two months, so that when the
time came for seeing her no longer in that way, he would have his
memories: there was the time of her first ball, all excitement and
happiness, the day at her uncle's when she had looked at him over the
top of the fans, the night at the opera when she had been so angry with
him, last night--

She had, through all this time, remained elusive. He did not know her,
could not reconcile one inconsistency with another--but he thought that
she cared about him and would marry him.

He had always known that he must one day marry. That necessity was, in
no way, connected with the emotional side of him, it rather had its
relationship with the common sense of him, the part that believed in the
Beaminsters and all their glory.

He must marry because Seddon Court must have a mistress, because he
himself must have children, because he would like to have someone there
to be kind to. That need in him for bestowing kindness upon someone was
always most urgent, and all sorts of animals and all sorts of persons
had shared it--now one person would have it all. He could not bear to
hurt anyone or anything, and the crises of his life were provided by
those occasions when, in the delight of one of his emotional moments,
hurting somebody was involved--there was always then a conflict.

He knew that it was just here that the Duchess failed to understand him.
She liked hurting people and expected him to be amused when she told him
little stories about her having done so. He had now a kind of dim
feeling that it was because the Duchess hoped that he was going to hurt
Rachel that she had pros