erative; and the most foolish boyish shape into which he could
throw his feelings for her was in this respect to be aimed at as the act
of highest wisdom.

He supplemented the natural warmth of feeling that she had wrought in
him by every artificial means in his power, to make the distraction the
more complete. He had not known anything like this self-obscuration for
a dozen years, and when he conjectured that she might really learn to
love him he felt exalted in his own eyes and purified from the dross of
his former life. Such uneasiness of conscience as arose when he suddenly
remembered Dare, and the possibility that Somerset was getting ousted
unfairly, had its weight in depressing him; but he was inclined to
accept his fortune without much question.

The journey to Baden, though short, was not without incidents on which
he could work out this curious hobby of cultivating to superlative power
an already positive passion. Handing her in and out of the carriage,
accidentally getting brushed by her clothes, of all such as this he made
available fuel. Paula, though she might have guessed the general nature
of what was going on, seemed unconscious of the refinements he was
trying to throw into it, and sometimes, when in stepping into or from a
railway carriage she unavoidably put her hand upon his arm, the obvious
insignificance she attached to the action struck him with misgiving.

One of the first things they did at Baden was to stroll into the
Trink-halle, where Paula sipped the water. She was about to put down the
glass, when De Stancy quickly took it from her hands as though to make
use of it himself.

'O, if that is what you mean,' she said mischievously, 'you should
have noticed the exact spot. It was there.' She put her finger on a
particular portion of its edge.

'You ought not to act like that, unless you mean something, Miss Power,'
he replied gravely.

'Tell me more plainly.'

'I mean, you should not do things which excite in me the hope that you
care something for me, unless you really do.'

'I put my finger on the edge and said it was there.'

'Meaning, "It was there my lips touched; let yours do the same."'

'The latter part I wholly deny,' she answered, with disregard, after
which she went away, and kept between Charlotte and her aunt for the
rest of the afternoon.

Since the receipt of the telegram Paula had been frequently silent; she
frequently stayed in alone, and sometimes she became quit