hilled. He jumped out and rubbed
furiously with his towels and flesh-brushes, chasing the Idea for simple
warmth, to have Something inside him, to feel just that sustainment; with
the cry: But no one can say I do not love my Nataly! And he tested it to
prove it by his readiness to die for her: which is heroically easier than
the devotedly living, and has a weight of evidence in our internal Courts
for surpassing the latter tedious performance.

His Nesta had knocked Lakelands to pieces. Except for the making of
money, the whole year of an erected Lakelands, notwithstanding
uninterrupted successes, was a blank. Or rather we have to wish it were a
blank. The scheme departs: payment for the enlisted servants of it is in
prospect. A black agent, not willingly enlisted, yet pointing to proofs
of service, refuses payment in ordinary coin; and we tell him we owe him
nothing, that he is not a man of the world, has no understanding of
Nature: and still the fellow thumps and alarums at a midnight door we are
astonished to find we have in our daylight house. How is it? Would other
men be so sensitive to him? Victor was appeased by the assurance of his
possession of an exceptionally scrupulous conscience; and he settled the
debate by thinking: 'After all, for a man like me, battling incessantly,
a kind of Vesuvius, I must have--can't be starved, must be fed--though,
pah! But I'm not to be questioned like other men.--But how about an
aristocracy of the contempt of distinctions?--But there is no escaping
distinctions! my aristocracy despises indulgence.--And indulges?--Say, an
exceptional nature! Supposing a certain beloved woman to pronounce on the
case?--She cannot: no woman can be a just judge of it.'---He cried: My
love of her is testified by my having Barmby handy to right her to-day,
tomorrow, the very instant the clock strikes the hour of my release!

Mention of the clock swung that silly gilt figure. Victor entered into
it, condemned to swing, and be a thrall. His intensity of sensation
launched him on an eternity of the swinging in ridiculous nakedness to
the measure of time gone crazy. He had to correct a reproof of Mrs.
Burman, as the cause of the nonsense. He ran down to breakfast, hopeing
he might hear of that clock stopped, and that sickening motion with it.

Another letter from the Sanfredini in Milan, warmly inviting to her villa
over Como, acted on him at breakfast like the waving of a banner. 'We
go,' Victor said t