r to notice it--was the sense of the resemblance of the little
plan before him to occasions, of the past, from which he was quite
disconnected, from which he could only desire to be. This was like
beginning something over, which was the last thing he wanted. The
strength, the beauty of his actual position was in its being wholly a
fresh start, was that what it began would be new altogether. These items
of his consciousness had clustered so quickly that by the time Charlotte
read them in his face he was in presence of what they amounted to. She
had challenged them as soon as read them, had met them with a "Do you
want then to go and tell her?" that had somehow made them ridiculous.
It had made him, promptly, fall back on minimizing it--that is on
minimizing "fuss." Apparent scruples were, obviously, fuss, and he had
on the spot clutched, in the light of this truth, at the happy principle
that would meet every case.

This principle was simply to be, with the girl, always simple--and with
the very last simplicity. That would cover everything. It had covered,
then and there, certainly, his immediate submission to the sight of what
was clearest. This was, really, that what she asked was little compared
to what she gave. What she gave touched him, as she faced him, for it
was the full tune of her renouncing. She really renounced--renounced
everything, and without even insisting now on what it had all been for
her. Her only insistence was her insistence on the small matter of
their keeping their appointment to themselves. That, in exchange for
"everything," everything she gave up, was verily but a trifle. He let
himself accordingly be guided; he so soon assented, for enlightened
indulgence, to any particular turn she might wish the occasion to take,
that the stamp of her preference had been well applied to it even while
they were still in the Park. The application in fact presently required
that they should sit down a little, really to see where they were; in
obedience to which propriety they had some ten minutes, of a quality
quite distinct, in a couple of penny-chairs under one of the larger
trees. They had taken, for their walk, to the cropped, rain-freshened
grass, after finding it already dry; and the chairs, turned away from
the broad alley, the main drive and the aspect of Park Lane, looked
across the wide reaches of green which seemed in a manner to refine
upon their freedom. They helped Charlotte thus to make her posit