was not in love--at least, not with her, but with her fitness for his
theory.

They sat by a solitary woodside, beneath a great elm tree. The hour was
full of magic, for though the sun had set, the smile of her day's joy
with him had not yet faded from the face of earth. It was the hour
vulgarised in drawing-room ballads as the 'gloaming.' They sat very near
to each other; he held her hand, toying with it; and now and again their
eyes met with the look that flutters before flight, that says, 'Dare I
give thee all? Dare I throw my eyes on thine as I would throw myself on
thee?' And then, at last, came the inevitable moment when the eyes of
each seem to cry 'O yes!' to the other, and the gates fly back; all the
hidden light springs forth, the woods swim round, and the lips meet with
a strange shock, while the eyes of the spirit close in a lapping dream
of great peace.

If you are not ready to play the man, beware of a kiss such as the lips
of little Hesper, that never knew to kiss before, pressed upon the mouth
of Narcissus. It sent a chill shudder through him, though it was so
sweet, for he could feel her whole life surging behind it; and was the
kiss he had given her for it such a kiss as that? But he had spoken much
to her of his ideas of marriage; she knew he was sworn for ever against
that. She must know the kiss had no such meaning; for, besides, did she
not scorn the soiled 'tie' also? Were not their theories at one in that?
He would be doing her no wrong; it was her own desire. Yet his kiss did
mean more than he could have imagined it meaning a week before. She had
grown to be genuinely desirable. If love tarried, passion was
awake--that dangerous passion, too, to which the intellect has added its
intoxication, and that is, so to say, legitimised by an 'idea.'

Her woman's intuition read the silence and answered to his thought.
'Have no fear,' she said, with the deep deliberation of passion; 'I
love you with my whole life, but I shall never burden you, Narcissus.
Love me as long as you can, I shall be content; and when the end comes,
though another woman takes you, I shall not hinder.'

O great girl-soul! What a poltroon, indeed, was Narcissus beside you at
that moment. You ready to stake your life on the throw, he temporising
and bargaining as over the terms of a lease. Surely, if he could for one
moment have seen himself in the light of your greatness, he had been
crushed beneath the misery of his own meanne