urned shyly away from him, her words
coming from under the fur hood which had fallen forward a little. 'I
know that--that--you are not rich, that you distrust yourself, that----'

'Oh, hush,' he said, and his voice was full of pain. 'You know so
little; let me paint myself. I have lived alone, for myself, in myself,
till sometimes there seems to be hardly anything left in me to love or
be loved; nothing but a brain, a machine that exists only for certain
selfish ends. My habits are the tyrants of years; and at Murewell,
though I loved you there, they were strong enough to carry me away from
you. There is something paralysing in me, which is always forbidding me
to feel, to will. Sometimes I think it is an actual physical
disability--the horror that is in me of change, of movement, of effort.
Can you bear with me? Can you be poor? Can you live a life of monotony?
Oh, impossible!' he broke out, almost putting her hand away from him.
'You, who ought to be a queen of this world, for whom everything bright
and brilliant is waiting if you will but stretch out your hand to it. It
is a crime--an infamy--that I should be speaking to you like this!'

Rose raised her head. A passing light shone upon her. She was trembling
and pale again, but her eyes were unchanged.

'No, no,' she said wistfully; 'not if you love me.'

He hung above her, an agony of feeling in the fine rigid face, of which
the beautiful features and surfaces were already worn and blanched by
the life of thought. What possessed him was not so much distrust of
circumstance as doubt, hideous doubt, of himself, of this very passion
beating within him. She saw nothing, meanwhile, but the
self-depreciation which she knew so well in him, and against which her
love in its rash ignorance and generosity cried out.

'You will not say you love me!' she cried, with hurrying breath. 'But I
know--I know--you do.'

Then her courage sinking, ashamed, blushing, once more turning away from
him--'At least, if you don't, I am very--very--unhappy.'

The soft words flew through his blood. For an instant he felt himself
saved, like Faust,--saved by the surpassing moral beauty of one moment's
impression. That she should need him, that his life should matter to
hers! They were passing the garden wall of a great house. In the deepest
shadow of it, he stooped suddenly and kissed her.

CHAPTER XXXVI

Langham parted with Rose at the corner of Martin Street. She would not
let