s not
as those young men are."

To speak at all, and arrange his ideas, was a vexation to the poor
merchant. He was here like an irritable traveller, who knocks at a gate,
which makes as if it opens, without letting him in. Emilia's naive
confidence he read as stupidity. It brought on a fresh access of the
nervous fever lurking in him, and he cried, jumping from his seat: "Well,
you can't have him, and there's an end. You must give up--confound! why!
do you expect to have everything you want at starting? There, my
child--but, upon my honour! a man loses his temper at having to talk for
an hour or so, and no result. You must go to bed; and--do you say your
prayers? Well! that's one way of getting out of it--pray that you may
forget all about what's not good for you. Why, you're almost like a young
man, when you set your mind on a thing. Bad! won't do! Say your prayers
regularly. And, please, pour me out a mouthful of brandy. My hand
trembles--I don't know what's the matter with it;--just like those rushes
on the Thames I used to see when out fishing. No wind, and yet there they
shake away. I wish it was daylight on the old river now! It's night, and
no mistake. I feel as if I had a fellow twirling a stick over my head.
The rascal's been at it for the last month. There, stop where you are, my
dear. Don't begin to dance!"

He pressed at his misty eyes, half under the impression that she was
taking a succession of dazzling leaps in air. Terror of an impending
blow, which he associated with Emilia's voice, made him entreat her to be
silent. After a space, he breathed a long breath of relief, saying: "No,
no; you're firm enough on your feet. I don't think I ever saw you dance.
My girls have given it up. What led me to think...but, let's to bed, and
say our prayers. I want a kiss."

Emilia kissed him on the forehead. The symptoms of illness were strange
to her, and passed unheeded. She was too full of her own burning passion
to take evidence from her sight. The sun of her world was threatened with
extinction. She felt herself already a wanderer in a land of tombs, where
none could say whether morning had come or gone. Intensely she looked her
misery in the face; and it was as a voice that said, "No sun: never sun
any more," to her. But a blue-hued moon slipped from among the clouds,
and hung in the black outstretched fingers of the tree of darkness,
fronting troubled waters. "This is thy light for ever! thou shalt live in
t