trothed himself; and
with every passing month he had done less to justify any single one of
the steps. What were the remedies? The house might be sublet; at any
rate, his father's bounty came to an end this quarter; engaging himself
formally to Pauline, he could throttle the Muse and become a
schoolmaster, and in two years perhaps they could be married. It would
be a wrench to abandon poetry and the hope of fame, indeed it would
stagger the very foundations of his pride; but rather than lose Pauline
he would be content to remain the obscurest creature on earth.
Literature might blazon his name; but her love blazoned his soul. Poetry
was only the flame of life made visible, and if he were to sacrifice
Pauline what gasping and ignoble rushlight of his own would he offer to
the world?

Yet could he bear to leave Pauline herself? The truth was he should
have gone in March, when she was in a way still remote and when like a
star she would have shone as brightly upon him absent or present. Now
that star was burning in his heart with passionate fires and fevers and
with quenchless ardors. It would be like death to leave her now; were
she absent from him her very name would be as a draught of liquid fire.
More implacable, too, than his own torment of love might be hers. If he
had gone in March, she would have been gently sad, but in those first
months she still had other interests; now if he parted from her she
would merely all the time be growing older and they would have between
them and their separation the intolerable wastage of their youth.
Pauline had surrendered to love all the simple joys which had hitherto
occupied her daily life; and if she were divided from him, he feared for
the fire that might consume her. It was he who had kindled it upon that
rosaureate evening of mid-May, and it was he who was charged with her
ultimate happiness. The accident of yesterday had reminded him sharply
how far this was so, and a sense of the tremendous responsibility
created by his love for her lay upon Guy. He must never again give her
family an occasion to remonstrate with her; he had been the one to
blame, and he wished Mrs. Grey had spoken to him without saying anything
to Pauline. How sad this long evening was, with reluctant day even now
at half past nine o'clock still luminous in the west.

Next morning there was a letter for Guy from his father.

FOX HALL, GALTON, HANTS,
_June 24th_.

MY DEAR GUY,--I inclose the