nd description. I love you to
oppressiveness--I, who have never before felt more than a pleasant
passing fancy for any woman I have ever seen. Let me look right into
your moonlit face and dwell on every line and curve in it! Only a
few hair-breadths make the difference between this face and faces I
have seen many times before I knew you; yet what a difference--the
difference between everything and nothing at all. One touch on that
mouth again! there, and there, and there. Your eyes seem heavy,
Eustacia."

"No, it is my general way of looking. I think it arises from my
feeling sometimes an agonizing pity for myself that I ever was born."

"You don't feel it now?"

"No. Yet I know that we shall not love like this always. Nothing can
ensure the continuance of love. It will evaporate like a spirit, and
so I feel full of fears."

"You need not."

"Ah, you don't know. You have seen more than I, and have been into
cities and among people that I have only heard of, and have lived more
years than I; but yet I am older at this than you. I loved another
man once, and now I love you."

"In God's mercy don't talk so, Eustacia!"

"But I do not think I shall be the one who wearies first. It will, I
fear, end in this way: your mother will find out that you meet me, and
she will influence you against me!"

"That can never be. She knows of these meetings already."

"And she speaks against me?"

"I will not say."

"There, go away! Obey her. I shall ruin you. It is foolish of you to
meet me like this. Kiss me, and go away for ever. For ever--do you
hear?--for ever!"

"Not I."

"It is your only chance. Many a man's love has been a curse to him."

"You are desperate, full of fancies, and wilful; and you
misunderstand. I have an additional reason for seeing you tonight
besides love of you. For though, unlike you, I feel our affection
may be eternal, I feel with you in this, that our present mode of
existence cannot last."

"Oh! 'tis your mother. Yes, that's it! I knew it."

"Never mind what it is. Believe this, I cannot let myself lose you.
I must have you always with me. This very evening I do not like to
let you go. There is only one cure for this anxiety, dearest--you
must be my wife."

She started: then endeavoured to say calmly, "Cynics say that cures
the anxiety by curing the love."

"But you must answer me. Shall I claim you some day--I don't mean at
once?"

"I must think," Eustacia murmured. "At present spe