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were both much older than Philip and had been married to
successive assistants while Philip was still a small boy. At
school there had been two or three girls of more boldness
than modesty whom some of the boys knew; and desperate
stories, due in all probability to the masculine imagination,
were told of intrigues with them; but Philip had always con-
cealed under a lofty contempt the terror with which they
filled him. His imagination and the books he had read had
inspired in him a desire for the Byronic attitude; and he
was torn between a morbid self-consciousness and a con-
viction that he owed it to himself to be gallant. He felt
now that he should be bright and amusing, but his brain
seemed empty and he could not for the life of him think of
anything to say. Fraulein Anna, the Frau Professor’s daugh-
ter, addressed herself to him frequently from a sense of
duty, but the other said little: she looked at him now and
then with sparkling eyes, and sometimes to his confusion
laughed outright. Philip felt that she thought him perfect-
ly ridiculous. They walked along the side of a hill among
pine-trees, and their pleasant odour caused Philip a keen
delight. The day was warm and cloudless. At last they came
to an eminence from which they saw the valley of the Rhine
spread out before them under the sun. It was a vast stretch
of country, sparkling with golden light, with cities in the
distance; and through it meandered the silver ribband of
the river. Wide spaces are rare in the corner of Kent which
Philip knew, the sea offers the only broad horizon, and the
immense distance he saw now gave him a peculiar, an inde-
scribable thrill. He felt suddenly elated. Though he did not

1 Of Human Bondage