n, from the roots to the flowering heights of that rare graft. She
gave him comprehension of the meaning of love: a word in many mouths,
not often explained. With her, wound in his idea of her, he perceived
it to signify a new start in our existence, a finer shoot of the tree
stoutly planted in good gross earth; the senses running their live sap,
and the minds companioned, and the spirits made one by the whole-natured
conjunction. In Booth, a happy prospect for the sons and daughters of
Earth, divinely indicating more than happiness: the speeding of us,
compact of what we are, between the ascetic rocks and the sensual
whirlpools, to the creation of certain nobler races, now very dimly
imagined.

Singularly enough, the man of these feelings was far from being a social
rebel. His Diana conjured them forth in relation to her, but was not
on his bosom to enlighten him generally. His notions of citizenship
tolerated the female Pharisees, as ladies offering us an excellent
social concrete where quicksands abound, and without quite justifying
the Lady Wathins and Constance Aspers of the world, whose virtues
he could set down to accident or to acid blood, he considered
them supportable and estimable where the Mrs. Fryar-Gunnetts were
innumerable, threatening to become a majority; as they will constantly
do while the sisterhood of the chaste are wattled in formalism and
throned in sourness.

Thoughts of Diana made phantoms of the reputable and their reverse
alike. He could not choose but think of her. She was free; and he
too; and they were as distant as the horizon sail and the aft-floating
castaway. Her passion for Dacier might have burnt out her heart. And at
present he had no claim to visit her, dared not intrude. He would have
nothing to say, if he went, save to answer questions upon points of
business: as to which, Lady Dunstane would certainly summon him when he
was wanted.

Riding in the park on a frosty morning, he came upon Sir Lukin, who
looked gloomy and inquired for news of Diana Warwick, saying that his
wife had forbidden him to call at her house just yet. 'She's got a cold,
you know,' said Sir Lukin; adding, 'confoundedly hard on women!--eh?
Obliged to keep up a show. And I'd swear, by all that's holy, Diana
Warwick hasn't a spot, not a spot, to reproach herself with. I fancy
I ought to know women by this time. And look here, Redworth, last
night--that is, I mean yesterday evening, I broke with a woman--a lady