s coming. That is how Love slays Death. Never did girl so give
her soul.

She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to a man untrusted
for the character she worshipped. But she could have given it to
Dartrey, despite his love of another, because it was her soul, without
any of the cravings, except to bestow.

He perceived, that he had been carried on for the number of steps which
are countless miles and do not permit the retreat across the desert
behind; and he was in some amazement at himself, remindful of the
different nature of our restraining power when we have a couple playing
on it. Yet here was this girl, who called him up to the heights of
young life again: and a brave girl; and she bled for the weak, had no
shrinking from the women underfoot: for the reason, that she was a girl
sovereignly pure, angelically tender. Was there a point of honour to
hold him back?

Nataly entered the room. She kissed Nesta, and sat silent.

'Mother, will you speak of me to him, if I go out?' Nesta said.

'We have spoken,' her mother replied, vexed by the unmaidenly allusion
to that theme.

She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it?--but that the Why
should I speak of you to him? struck the louder note in her bosom: and
then, What is there that this girl cannot guess!--filled the mother's
heart with apprehensive dread: and an inward cry, What things will she
not set going, to have them discussed. And the appalling theme, sitting
offensive though draped in their midst, was taken for a proof of the
girl's unblushingness. After standing as one woman against the world so
long, Nataly was relieved to be on the side of a world now convictedly
unjust to her in the confounding of her with the shameless. Her mind had
taken the brand of that thought:--And Nesta had brought her to it:--And
Dudley Sowerby, a generous representative of the world, had kindly,
having the deputed power to do so, sustained her, only partially blaming
Nesta, not casting them off; as the world, with which Nataly felt, under
a sense of the protection calling up all her gratitude to young Dudley,
would have approved his doing.

She was passing through a fit of the cowardice peculiar to the tediously
strained, who are being more than commonly tried--persecuted, as they
say when they are not supplicating their tyrannical Authority for
aid. The world will continue to be indifferent to their view of it
and behaviour toward it until it ceases t