upposing they
revealed themselves. She would come to feel a humorous sort of
tenderness for him, a zealous care for his susceptibilities, and, after
all, she considered, thinking of her father and mother, what is love?

Naturally, with her face, position, and background, she had experience
of young men who wished to marry her, and made protestations of love,
but, perhaps because she did not return the feeling, it remained
something of a pageant to her. Not having experience of it herself, her
mind had unconsciously occupied itself for some years in dressing up an
image of love, and the marriage that was the outcome of love, and the
man who inspired love, which naturally dwarfed any examples that came
her way. Easily, and without correction by reason, her imagination made
pictures, superb backgrounds casting a rich though phantom light upon
the facts in the foreground. Splendid as the waters that drop with
resounding thunder from high ledges of rock, and plunge downwards into
the blue depths of night, was the presence of love she dreamt, drawing
into it every drop of the force of life, and dashing them all asunder in
the superb catastrophe in which everything was surrendered, and nothing
might be reclaimed. The man, too, was some magnanimous hero, riding a
great horse by the shore of the sea. They rode through forests together,
they galloped by the rim of the sea. But waking, she was able to
contemplate a perfectly loveless marriage, as the thing one did actually
in real life, for possibly the people who dream thus are those who do
the most prosaic things.

At this moment she was much inclined to sit on into the night, spinning
her light fabric of thoughts until she tired of their futility, and went
to her mathematics; but, as she knew very well, it was necessary that
she should see her father before he went to bed. The case of Cyril
Alardyce must be discussed, her mother's illusions and the rights of the
family attended to. Being vague herself as to what all this amounted
to, she had to take counsel with her father. She took her letters in her
hand and went downstairs. It was past eleven, and the clocks had
come into their reign, the grandfather's clock in the hall ticking in
competition with the small clock on the landing. Mr. Hilbery's study ran
out behind the rest of the house, on the ground floor, and was a very
silent, subterranean place, the sun in daytime casting a mere abstract
of light through a skylight upon