is wishes: that he might see her, be blind to her;
embrace, discard; heal his wound, and tear it wider. He thanked her for
the grossness of an offence precluding excuses. He was aware of a glimmer
of advocacy in the very grossness. He conjured-up her features, and they
said, her innocence was the sinner; they scoffed at him for the dupe he
was willing to be. She had enigma's mouth, with the eyes of morning.

More than most girls, she was the girl-Sphinx to him because of her
having ideas--or what he deemed ideas. She struck a toneing warmth
through his intelligence, not dissimilar to the livelier circulation of
the blood in the frame breathing mountain air. She really helped him,
incited him to go along with this windy wild modern time more cheerfully,
if not quite hopefully. For she had been the book of Romance he despised
when it appeared as a printed volume: and which might have educated the
young man to read some among our riddles in the book of humanity. The
white he was ready to take for silver the black were all black; the
spotted had received corruption's label. Her youthful French governess
Mademoiselle de Seilles was also peculiarly enigmatic at the mouth
conversant, one might expect, with the disintegrating literature of her
country. In public, the two talked of St. Louis. One of them in secret
visits a Mrs. Marsett. The Southweare women, the Hennen women, and Lady
Evelina Reddish, were artless candid creatures in their early days, not
transgressing in a glance. Lady Grace Halley had her fit of the
devotional previous to marriage. No girl known to Dudley by report or
acquaintance had committed so scandalous an indiscretion as Miss
Radnor's: it pertained to the insolently vile.

And on that ground, it started the voluble defence. For certain suspected
things will dash suspicion to the rebound, when they are very dark. As
soon as the charge against her was moderated, the defence expired. He
heard the world delivering its judgement upon her; and he sorrowfully
acquiesced. She passed from him.

When she was cut off, she sang him in the distance a remembered saying of
hers, with the full melody of her voice. One day, treating of modern
pessimism, he had draped a cadaverous view of our mortal being in a
quotation of the wisdom of the Philosopher Emperor: 'To set one's love
upon the swallow is a futility.' And she, weighing it, nodded, and
replied: 'May not the pleasure for us remain if we set our love upon the
be