glories of summer. I can but stay at Grasmere a very few days; but
before I leave I must know this, am I going to work for Lily or am I
not? On the answer to that question depends all. If not to work for her,
there would be no glory in the summer, no triumph in art to me: I refuse
the offer. If she says, "Yes; it is for me you work," then she becomes
my destiny. She assures my career. Here I speak as an artist: nobody who
is not an artist can guess how sovereign over even his moral being, at
a certain critical epoch in his career of artist or his life of man,
is the success or the failure of a single work. But I go on to speak as
man. My love for Lily is such for the last six months that, though if
she rejected me I should still serve art, still yearn for fame, it would
be as an old man might do either. The youth of my life would be gone.

As man I say, all my thoughts, all my dreams of happiness, distinct from
Art and fame, are summed up in the one question, "Is Lily to be my wife
or not?"

Yours affectionately,

W. M.

Kenelm returned the letter without a word.

Enraged by his silence, Mrs. Cameron exclaimed, "Now, sir, what say you?
You have scarcely known Lily five weeks. What is the feverish fancy of
five weeks' growth to the lifelong devotion of a man like this? Do you
now dare to say, 'I persist'?"

Kenelm waved his hand very quietly, as if to dismiss all conception of
taunt and insult and said with his soft melancholy eyes fixed upon the
working features of Lily's aunt, "This man is more worthy of her than
I. He prays you, in his letter, to prepare your niece for that change of
relationship which he dreads too abruptly to break to her himself. Have
you done so?"

"I have; the night I got the letter."

"And--you hesitate; speak truthfully, I implore. And she--"

"She," answered Mrs. Cameron, feeling herself involuntarily compelled to
obey the voice of that prayer--"she seemed stunned at first, muttering,
'This is a dream: it cannot be true,--cannot! I Lion's wife--I--I!
I, his destiny! In me his happiness!' And then she laughed her pretty
child's laugh, and put her arms round my neck, and said, 'You are
jesting, aunty. He could not write thus!' So I put that part of his
letter under her eyes; and when she had convinced herself, her face
became very grave, more like a woman's face than I ever saw it; and
after a pause she cried out passionately, 'Can you think me--can I think
myself--so bad,