life. So, less from
what thoughts he did have on the subject than from his absence of
thought thereon, he lapsed into peace of mind, and went to sleep,
rejoicing in his security and trusting it would last. Her face did not
appear in his dreams. He had not retained a strong or accurate
impression of that face. His mind had been too full of other things,
even while enacting his impromptu love-scene, to make note of her
beauty. He had been sensible, of course, that she was beautiful, but
there had not been time or circumstance for flirtation. He had not for
an instant viewed her as a possible object of conquest for its own
sake. She had been to him only an enemy, in the shape of a beautiful
young girl, and of whom it had become necessary to make use. And so
his dreams that night were made up of wild cavalry charges, rides
through the wind, and painful crushings and tearings of his leg.

Elizabeth's thoughts were in a whirl, her feelings beyond analysis.
She was sensible mainly of a wholly novel and vast pleasure at the
adoration so impetuously expressed for her by this audacious
stranger, of a pride in his masterful way, of applause for that very
manner which she had rebuked as insolence. Was this love at last?
Undoubtedly; for she had read all the romances and plays and poems,
and, if this feeling of hers were a thing other than the love they
all described, they would have described such a feeling also.
Because she had never felt its soft touch before, she had thought
herself exempt from it. But now that it had found lodgment in her,
she knew it at once, from the very fact that in a flash she
understood all the romances and plays and poems that had before
interested her but as mere tales, whose motives had seemed arbitrary
and insufficient. Now they all took reality and reason. She knew at
last why Hero threw herself into the Hellespont after Leander, why
all that commotion was caused by Helen of Troy, why Oriana took
such trouble for Mirabel, why Juliet died on Romeo's body, why Miss
Richland paid Honeywood's debts. The moon, rushing through a cleft
in the clouds (she had opened one of the shutters on putting out the
candles), had for her a sudden beauty which accounted for the fine
things the poets had said of it and love together. Yes, because it
opened on her world of romance a magic window, letting in a wondrous
light, waking that world to throbbing life, clothing it with
indescribable charm, she knew the name of th