nd; it consents to its whirling in anticipation
of an undated hour when it will no longer be neutral.

There may be, moreover, while each has the key of the fellow breast, a
mutually sensitive nerve to protest against intrusion of light or sound.
The cloud over the name of their girl could now strike Nataly and
Victor dumb in their taking of counsel. She divined that his hint had
encouraged him to bring the crisis nearer, and he that her comprehension
had become tremblingly awake. They shrank, each of them, the more from
an end drawing closely into view. All subjects glooming off or darkening
up to it were shunned by them verbally, and if they found themselves
entering beneath that shadow, conversation passed to an involuntary
gesture, more explicit with him, significant of the prohibited, though
not acknowledging it.

All the stronger was it Victor's purpose, leaping in his fashion to the
cover of action as an escape from perplexity, to burn and scheme for
the wedding of their girl--the safe wedding of that dearest, to have her
protected, secure, with the world warm about her. And he well knew why
his Nataly had her look of a closed vault (threatening, if opened, to
thunder upon Life) when he dropped his further hints. He chose to call
it feminine inconsistency, in a woman who walked abroad with a basket
of marriage-ties for the market on her arm. He knew that she would soon
have to speak the dark words to their girl; and the idea of any doing
of it, caught at his throat. Reasonably she dreaded the mother's task;
pardonably indeed. But it is for the mother to do, with a girl. He
deputed it lightly to the mother because he could see himself stating
the facts to a son. 'And, my dear boy, you will from this day draw your
five thousand a year, and we double it on the day of your marriage,
living at Lakelands or where you will.'

His desire for his girl's protection by the name of one of our great
Families, urged him to bind Nataly to the fact, with the argument, that
it was preferable for the girl to hear their story during her green
early youth, while she reposed her beautiful blind faith in the
discretion of her parents, and as an immediate step to the placing of
her hand in a husband's. He feared that her mother required schooling
to tell the story vindicatingly and proudly, in a manner to distinguish
instead of degrading or temporarily seeming to accept degradation.

The world would weigh on her confession of the we