mysterious emotion. She all but put
her hand into his again, asking him childishly to hope, to be consoled.
But the maidenly impulse restrained her, and once more he leant on the
gate, burying his face in his hands.

Suddenly he felt himself utterly tired, relaxed. Strong nervous reaction
set in. What had all this scene, this tragedy, been about? And then in
another instant was that sense of the ridiculous again clamouring to be
heard. He--the man of thirty-five--confessing himself, making a tragic
scene, playing Manfred or Cain to this adorable half-fledged creature,
whom he had known five days! Supposing Elsmere had been there to
hear--Elsmere with his sane eye, his laugh! As he leant over the gate he
found himself quivering with impatience to be away--by himself--out of
reach--the critic in him making the most bitter remorseless mock of all
these heroics and despairs the other self had been indulging in. But for
the life of him he could not find a word to say--a move to make. He
stood hesitating, _gauche_, as usual.

'Do you know, Mr. Langham,' said Rose lightly, by his side, 'that there
is no time at all left for _you_ to give _me_ good advice in? That is an
obligation still hanging over you. I don't mean to release you from it,
but if I don't go in now and finish the covering of those library books,
the youth of Murewell will be left without any literature till Heaven
knows when!'

He could have blessed her for the tone, for the escape into common
mundanity.

'Hang literature--hang the parish library!' he said with a laugh as he
moved after her. Yet his real inner feeling towards that parish library
was one of infinite friendliness.

'Hear these men of letters!' she said scornfully. But she was happy;
there was a glow on her cheek.

A bramble caught her dress; she stopped and laid her white hand to it,
but in vain. He knelt in an instant, and between them they wrenched it
away, but not till those soft slim fingers had several times felt the
neighbourhood of his brown ones, and till there had flown through and
through him once more, as she stooped over him, the consciousness that
she was young, that she was beautiful, that she had pitied him so
sweetly, that they were alone.

'Rose!'

It was Catherine calling--Catherine, who stood at the end of the
grass-path, with eyes all indignation and alarm.

Langham rose quickly from the ground.

He felt as though the gods had saved him--or damned him--which?