lt of
"propinquity, Sir, propinquity," and a pretty face--and nothing more.

But here his intellect and his imagination stepped in, telling him
plainly that it was not nonsense, that he had not merely made a donkey
of himself over an hysterical, or possibly a love-sick girl. They told
him that because a thing is a mystery it is not necessarily a folly,
though mysteries are for the most part dealt in by fools. They suggested
that there may be many things and forces above us and around us,
invisible as an electric current, intangible as light, yet existent and
capable of manifestation under certain rare and favourable conditions.

And was it not possible that such conditions should unite in a woman
like Beatrice, who combined in herself a beauty of body which was only
outpassed by the beauty of her mind? It was no answer to say that most
women could never inspire the unearthly passion with which he had been
shaken some ten hours past, or that most men could never become aware of
the inspiration. Has not humanity powers and perceptions denied to the
cattle of the fields, and may there not be men and women as far removed
from their fellows in this respect as these are from the cattle?

But the weak point of mysterious occurrences is that they lead nowhere,
and do not materially alter the facts of life. One cannot, for instance,
plead a mystery in a court of law; so, dropping the imaginative side of
the question as one beyond him, Geoffrey came to its practical aspect,
only to find it equally thorny.

Odd as it may seem, Geoffrey did not to this moment know the exact
position which he occupied in the mind of Beatrice, or that she occupied
in his. He was not in love with her, at least not in a way in which he
had ever experienced the influence of that, on the whole, inconvenient
and disagreeable passion. At any rate he argued from the hypothesis that
he was not in love with her. This he refused to admit now in the light
of day, though he had admitted it fully in the watches of the night. It
would not do to admit it. But he was forced to acknowledge that she had
crept into his life and possessed it so completely that then and for
months afterwards, except in deep sleep or in hours of severe mental
strain, not a single half hour would pass without bringing its thought
of Beatrice. Everything that was beautiful, or grand, or elevating,
reminded him of her--and what higher compliment could a mistress have?
If he listened to gl