s she was in character.
Reflection now said this; not impulse. Her words rang through him. At
every meeting she said things to confound his estimate of the wits of
women, or be remembered for some spirited ring they had: A high wind will
make a dead leaf fly like a bird. He murmured it and flew with her. She
quickened a vein of imagination that gave him entrance to a strangely
brilliant sphere, above his own, where, she sustaining, he too could
soar; and he did, scarce conscious of walking home, undressing, falling
asleep.

The act of waking was an instantaneous recovery of his emotional rapture
of the overnight; nor was it a bar to graver considerations. His Chief
had gone down to a house in the country; his personal business was to see
and sound the followers of their party--after another sight of his Tony.
She would be sure to counsel sagaciously; she always did. She had a
marvellous intuition of the natures of the men he worked with, solely
from his chance descriptions of them; it was as though he started the
bird and she transfixed it. And she should not have matter to rule her
smooth brows: that he swore to. She should sway him as she pleased, be
respected after her prescribed manner. The promise must be exacted;
nothing besides, promise.--You see, Tony, you cannot be less than Tony to
me now, he addressed the gentle phantom of her. Let me have your word,
and I am your servant till the Session ends.--Tony blushes her swarthy
crimson: Diana, fluttering, rebukes her; but Diana is the appeasable
Goddess; Tony is the woman, and she loves him. The glorious Goddess need
not cut them adrift; they can show her a book of honest pages.

Dacier could truthfully say he had worshipped, done knightly service to
the beloved woman, homage to the aureole encircling her. Those friends of
his, covertly congratulating him on her preference, doubtless thought him
more privileged than he was; but they did not know Diana; and they were
welcome, if they would only believe, to the knowledge that he was at the
feet of this most sovereign woman. He despised the particular Satyr-world
which, whatever the nature or station of the woman, crowns the
desecrator, and bestows the title of Fool on the worshipper. He could
have answered veraciously that she had kept him from folly.

Nevertheless the term to service must come. In the assurance of the
approaching term he stood braced against a blowing world; happy as men
are when their muscles are s