in anything
he did; but in everything an indescribable lightness, a seeming
impossibility of doing anything else, or doing anything better, which
was so graceful, so natural, and agreeable, that it overcomes me, even
now, in the remembrance.

We made merry in the little parlour, where the Book of Martyrs,
unthumbed since my time, was laid out upon the desk as of old, and where
I now turned over its terrific pictures, remembering the old sensations
they had awakened, but not feeling them. When Peggotty spoke of what
she called my room, and of its being ready for me at night, and of her
hoping I would occupy it, before I could so much as look at Steerforth,
hesitating, he was possessed of the whole case.

'Of course,' he said. 'You'll sleep here, while we stay, and I shall
sleep at the hotel.'

'But to bring you so far,' I returned, 'and to separate, seems bad
companionship, Steerforth.'

'Why, in the name of Heaven, where do you naturally belong?' he said.
'What is "seems", compared to that?' It was settled at once.

He maintained all his delightful qualities to the last, until we started
forth, at eight o'clock, for Mr. Peggotty's boat. Indeed, they were more
and more brightly exhibited as the hours went on; for I thought even
then, and I have no doubt now, that the consciousness of success in his
determination to please, inspired him with a new delicacy of perception,
and made it, subtle as it was, more easy to him. If anyone had told me,
then, that all this was a brilliant game, played for the excitement of
the moment, for the employment of high spirits, in the thoughtless love
of superiority, in a mere wasteful careless course of winning what was
worthless to him, and next minute thrown away--I say, if anyone had told
me such a lie that night, I wonder in what manner of receiving it my
indignation would have found a vent! Probably only in an increase, had
that been possible, of the romantic feelings of fidelity and friendship
with which I walked beside him, over the dark wintry sands towards the
old boat; the wind sighing around us even more mournfully, than it had
sighed and moaned upon the night when I first darkened Mr. Peggotty's
door.

'This is a wild kind of place, Steerforth, is it not?'

'Dismal enough in the dark,' he said: 'and the sea roars as if it were
hungry for us. Is that the boat, where I see a light yonder?' 'That's
the boat,' said I.

'And it's the same I saw this morning,' he returned.