ing, defining. Aldous's heart leapt to the spur of a sudden resolve.

Instinctively she turned to him at the same moment as he to her, and
seeing his look she paled a little.

"Do you guess at all why it hurts me to jar with you?" he said--finding
his words in a rush, he did not know how--"Why every syllable of yours
matters to me? It is because I have hopes--dreams--which have become my
life! If you could accept this--this--feeling--this devotion--which has
grown up in me--if you could trust yourself to me--you should have no
cause, I think--ever--to think me hard or narrow towards any person, any
enthusiasm for which you had sympathy. May I say to you all that is in
my mind--or--or--am I presuming?"

She looked away from him, crimson again. A great wave of
exultation--boundless, intoxicating--swept through her. Then it was
checked by a nobler feeling--a quick, penitent sense of his nobleness.

"You don't know me," she said hurriedly: "you think you do. But I am all
odds and ends. I should annoy--wound--disappoint you."

His quiet grey eyes flamed.

"Come and sit down here, on these dry roots," he said, taking already
joyous command of her. "We shall be undisturbed. I have so much to say!"

She obeyed trembling. She felt no passion, but the strong thrill of
something momentous and irreparable, together with a swelling
pride--pride in such homage from such a man.

He led her a few steps down the slope, found a place for her against a
sheltering trunk, and threw himself down beside her. As he looked up at
the picture she made amid the autumn branches, at her bent head, her
shy moved look, her white hand lying ungloved on her black dress,
happiness overcame him. He took her hand, found she did not resist, drew
it to him, and clasping it in both his, bent his brow, his lips upon it.
It shook in his hold, but she was passive. The mixture of emotion and
self-control she showed touched him deeply. In his chivalrous modesty he
asked for nothing else, dreamt of nothing more.

Half an hour later they were still in the same spot. There had been much
talk between them, most of it earnest, but some of it quite gay, broken
especially by her smiles. Her teasing mood, however, had passed away.
She was instead composed and dignified, like one conscious that life had
opened before her to great issues.

Yet she had flinched often before that quiet tone of eager joy in which
he had described his first impressions of her, his sur