ly! He
absolutely writhed as he thought of the confession she had wrung from
him on the boat in the darkness of night. The one conception which had
sustained his dignity when drawn out of his shell on that occasion--that
of her charming ignorance of all such matters--how absurd it was!

This man, whose imagination had been fed up to preternatural size by
lonely study and silent observations of his kind--whose emotions had
been drawn out long and delicate by his seclusion, like plants in a
cellar--was now absolutely in pain. Moreover, several years of poetic
study, and, if the truth must be told, poetic efforts, had tended
to develop the affective side of his constitution still further, in
proportion to his active faculties. It was his belief in the absolute
newness of blandishment to Elfride which had constituted her primary
charm. He began to think it was as hard to be earliest in a woman's
heart as it was to be first in the Pool of Bethesda.

That Knight should have been thus constituted: that Elfride's second
lover should not have been one of the great mass of bustling mankind,
little given to introspection, whose good-nature might have compensated
for any lack of appreciativeness, was the chance of things. That her
throbbing, self-confounding, indiscreet heart should have to defend
itself unaided against the keen scrutiny and logical power which Knight,
now that his suspicions were awakened, would sooner or later be sure to
exercise against her, was her misfortune. A miserable incongruity was
apparent in the circumstance of a strong mind practising its unerring
archery upon a heart which the owner of that mind loved better than his
own.

Elfride's docile devotion to Knight was now its own enemy. Clinging
to him so dependently, she taught him in time to presume upon that
devotion--a lesson men are not slow to learn. A slight rebelliousness
occasionally would have done him no harm, and would have been a world
of advantage to her. But she idolized him, and was proud to be his
bond-servant.

Chapter XXXI

'A worm i' the bud.'

One day the reviewer said, 'Let us go to the cliffs again, Elfride;'
and, without consulting her wishes, he moved as if to start at once.

'The cliff of our dreadful adventure?' she inquired, with a shudder.
'Death stares me in the face in the person of that cliff.'

Nevertheless, so entirely had she sunk her individuality in his that the
remark was not uttered as an expostu