ttered her. Like what did she strive to be? The picture
of another self was before her--a creature calmly strong, unruffled, and
a refuge to her beloved. It was a steady light through every wind that
blew, save when the heart narrowed; and then it waxed feeble, and the
life in her was hungry for she knew not what.

Georgiana's struggle was to make her great passion eat up all the others.
Sure of the intensity and thoroughness of her love for Merthyr, she would
forecast for herself tasks in his service impossible save to one
sensually dead and therefore spiritually sexless. "My love is pure," she
would say; as if that were the talisman which rendered it superhuman. She
was under the delusion that lovers' love was a reprehensible egoism. Her
heart had never had place for it; and thus her nature was unconsummated,
and the torment of a haunting insufficiency accompanied her sweetest
hours, ready to mislead her in all but very clearest actions.

She saw, or she divined, much of this struggle; but the vision of it was
fitful, not consecutive. It frightened and harassed without illuminating
her. Now, upon Merthyr's return, she was moved by it just enough to take
his hand and say:--

"We are the same?"

"What can change us?" he replied.

"Or who?" and as she smiled up to him, she was ashamed of her smile.

"Yes, who!" he interjected, by this time quite enlightened. All subtle
feelings are discerned by Welsh eyes when untroubled by any mental
agitation. Brother and sister were Welsh, and I may observe that there is
human nature and Welsh nature.

"Forgive me," she said; "I have been disturbed about you."

Perceiving that it would be well to save her from any spiritual twists
and turns that she might reach what she desired to know, he spoke out
fully: "I have not written to you about Miss Belloni lately. I think it
must be seven or eight days since I had a letter from her--you shall see
it--looking as if it had been written in the dark. She gave the address
of a London hotel. I went to her, and her story was that she had come to
town to get Mr. Pole's consent to her marriage with his son; and that
when she succeeded in making herself understood by him, the old man fell,
smitten with paralysis, crying out that he was ruined, and his children
beggars."

"Ah!" said Georgiana; "then this son is engaged to her?"

"She calls him her lover."

"Openly?"

"Have I not told you? 'naked and unashamed.'"

"Of course that has a