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forward to your coming back with oh! such impatience.’
‘Mind you get through your exam.’
He had been working for it industriously, and now with
only ten days before him he made a final effort. He was very
anxious to pass, first to save himself time and expense, for
money had been slipping through his fingers during the
last four months with incredible speed; and then because
this examination marked the end of the drudgery: after that
the student had to do with medicine, midwifery, and sur-
gery, the interest of which was more vivid than the anatomy
and physiology with which he had been hitherto concerned.
Philip looked forward with interest to the rest of the cur-
riculum. Nor did he want to have to confess to Mildred that
he had failed: though the examination was difficult and the
majority of candidates were ploughed at the first attempt,
he knew that she would think less well of him if he did not
succeed; she had a peculiarly humiliating way of showing
what she thought.
Mildred sent him a postcard to announce her safe ar-
rival, and he snatched half an hour every day to write a long
letter to her. He had always a certain shyness in expressing
himself by word of mouth, but he found he could tell her,
pen in hand, all sorts of things which it would have made
him feel ridiculous to say. Profiting by the discovery he
poured out to her his whole heart. He had never been able
to tell her before how his adoration filled every part of him
so that all his actions, all his thoughts, were touched with it.
He wrote to her of the future, the happiness that lay before
him, and the gratitude which he owed her. He asked him-