ceeded in doing, that the
childish effort to move it should be continued at such a cost?

For years, down to one year back, and less--yesterday, it could be
said--all human blessedness appeared to him in the person of Renee,
given him under any condition whatsoever. She was not less adorable now.
In her decision, and a courage that he especially prized in women, she
was a sweeter to him than when he was with her in France: too sweet to
be looked at and refused.

'But we must live in England,' he cried abruptly out of his inner mind.

'Oh! not England, Italy, Italy!' Renee exclaimed: 'Italy, or Greece:
anywhere where we have sunlight. Mountains and valleys are my dream.
Promise it, Nevil. I will obey you; but this is my wish. Take me through
Venice, that I may look at myself and wonder. We can live at sea, in a
yacht; anywhere with you but in England. This country frowns on me; I
can hardly fetch my breath here, I am suffocated. The people all walk in
lines in England. Not here, Nevil! They are good people, I am sure;
and it is your country: but their faces chill me, their voices grate;
I should never understand them; they would be to me like their fogs
eternally; and I to them? O me! it would be like hearing sentence in the
dampness of the shroud perpetually. Again I say I do not doubt that they
are very good: they claim to be; they judge others; they may know how to
make themselves happy in their climate; it is common to most creatures
to do so, or to imagine it. Nevil! not England!'

Truly 'the mad commander and his French marquise' of the Bevisham
Election ballad would make a pretty figure in England!

His friends of his own class would be mouthing it. The story would be
a dogging shadow of his public life, and, quite as bad, a reflection
on his party. He heard the yelping tongues of the cynics. He saw the
consternation and grief of his old Bevisham hero, his leader and his
teacher.

'Florence,' he said, musing on the prospect of exile and idleness:
'there's a kind of society to be had in Florence.'

Renee asked him if he cared so much for society.

He replied that women must have it, just as men must have exercise.

'Old women, Nevil; intriguers, tattlers.'

'Young women, Renee.'

She signified no.

He shook the head of superior knowledge paternally.

Her instinct of comedy set a dimple faintly working in her cheek.

'Not if they love, Nevil.'

'At least,' said he, 'a man does not like to see the w