s in truth innocent. It
was because he had remained as ignorant as a child of the nature of
passion that he had experimented with it so recklessly.

With her he had delightedly discovered love. Indeed, she had had such a
courtship that she need envy no other woman hers. For all about her days
with Harry there had been the last quality the world would have believed
it possible could pervade the seduction of a farmer's daughter of
seventeen by a squire who was something of a rip: the quality of a fair
dawn seen through the windows of a church, of a generous spring-time
that synchronised with the beginning of some noble course of action.
She should have been well pleased. Yet she knew now that the occasion
would have been more beautiful if, standing under that may-tree, she had
looked up into Richard's eyes. They would not have been innocent, they
would not have sparkled like waters running swiftly under sunshine. But
they would have told her that here was the genius who would choose good
with the vehemence with which wicked men choose evil, who would follow
the aims of virtue with the dynamic power that sinners have, who would
pour into faithfulness the craft and virility that Don Juan spent on all
his adventures. Besides, Richard's eyes were so marvellously black....
She reminded herself in vain that Harry had possessed far beyond all
other human beings the faculty of joy, that uninvited there had dwelt
about him always that spirit which men labour to evoke in carnival, that
there had been a confidence about his gaiety as if the gods had told him
that laughter was the just final comment on life. But she knew quite
well that the woman who was chosen by Richard would be loved more
beautifully than she had ever been.

She started to her feet and looked urgently towards the ruins to see if
Ellen was returning, because she felt that if she did not commit herself
to affection by making some affectionate demonstration from which she
could not withdraw she might find herself hating this unfortunate girl.
Having once known the bitterness of moral defeat, she dreaded base
passions as cripples dread pain, and she knew that this irrational
hatred would be especially base, a hunchback among the emotions. It
would be treason against Richard not to love anything he loved; and
besides, it would be most wrong to hate this girl, who deserved it as
little as a flower. Yet the emotion seemed independent of her and now
nearly immanent, and