..." from the scandalised Mrs. Lear, "if you are set on having
a village girl ... there are many from good homes, respectable girls.
Not that I've anything to say against this poor child, God knows, but
her mother, ma'am.... I assure you 'tis impossible."

Miss Le Pettit, who guessed very well the sort of tale Mrs. Lear's
delicacy spared her, laughed the matter off.

"It shall be as I say, Mrs. Lear, I can afford to be above these things.
You shall dance with me, Loveday. You must have a white frock, of
course, but I suppose you have a Sunday frock? Quite a simple thing,
the simpler the better, and a white sash of satin riband. Don't forget.
I shall expect to see you waiting for me at the Flora."

And Miss Le Pettit rose, having carried her freak of sensibility on long
enough, and sweeping past Loveday with a dazzling smile, was accompanied
to the front door by Mrs. Lear, and after standing poised for a moment
against the sunny verdure beyond, took wing with a flutter of white
taffetas and was gone.

Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions--the passion
for an idea. Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le
Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled
in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in
the angelic visitant, but in herself. She, too, would be all white and
dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it
but in those of a dance. She made the common mistake of a lover--she
imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she
was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.

Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a
crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion
of the white garb which must be hers. It was, indeed, a symbol to her,
the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for,
of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was
lacked by those who jeered at her. And, though she knew it not, nor
would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no
form of lover more dangerous in life--or more endangered by the chances
of it. For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but
he who loves an idea gives his soul.

CHAPTER IV: IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER'S
DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS

Chapter IV

IN WHICH THE ONION-SELL