garising
influences. Besides, you ought to know," the young man proceeded, in the
same cool, mild, deliberate tone, as if he were demonstrating a
mathematical solution, "you ought to know that your connexion with all
these rantings and ravings is the most unreal, accidental, illusory
thing in the world. You think you care about them, but you don't at all.
They were imposed upon you by circumstances, by unfortunate
associations, and you accepted them as you would have accepted any other
burden, on account of the sweetness of your nature. You always want to
please some one, and now you go lecturing about the country, and trying
to provoke demonstrations, in order to please Miss Chancellor, just as
you did it before to please your father and mother. It isn't _you_, the
least in the world, but an inflated little figure (very remarkable in
its way too) whom you have invented and set on its feet, pulling
strings, behind it, to make it move and speak, while you try to conceal
and efface yourself there. Ah, Miss Tarrant, if it's a question of
pleasing, how much you might please some one else by tipping your
preposterous puppet over and standing forth in your freedom as well as
in your loveliness!"

While Basil Ransom spoke--and he had not spoken just that way
yet--Verena sat there deeply attentive, with her eyes on the ground; but
as soon as he ceased she sprang to her feet--something made her feel
that their association had already lasted quite too long. She turned
away from him as if she wished to leave him, and indeed were about to
attempt to do so. She didn't desire to look at him now, or even to have
much more conversation with him. "Something," I say, made her feel so,
but it was partly his curious manner--so serene and explicit, as if he
knew the whole thing to an absolute certainty--which partly scared her
and partly made her feel angry. She began to move along the path to one
of the gates, as if it were settled that they should immediately leave
the place. He laid it all out so clearly; if he had had a revelation he
couldn't speak otherwise. That description of herself as something
different from what she was trying to be, the charge of want of reality,
made her heart beat with pain; she was sure, at any rate, it was her
real self that was there with him now, where she oughtn't to be. In a
moment he was at her side again, going with her; and as they walked it
came over her that some of the things he had said to her wer