and was blushing to think how she had asked his
counsel, almost before she knew where their talk was leading. How was
it lawful for the Christian to spend the few short years of the earthly
combat in any pursuit however noble and exquisite, which merely aimed
at the gratification of the senses, and implied in the pursuer the
emphasizing rather than the surrender of self?

He argued it very much as Kingsley would have argued it, tried to lift
her to a more intelligent view of a multifarious work, dwelling on
the function of pure beauty in life, and on the influence of beauty
on character, pointing out the value to the race of all individual
development, and pressing home on her the natural religious question:
How are the artistic aptitudes to be explained unless the Great
Designer meant them to have a use and function in His world? She replied
doubtfully that she had always supposed they were lawful for recreation,
and like any other trade for bread-winning, but--

Then he told her much that he knew about the humanizing effect of music
on the poor. He described to her the efforts of a London society, of
which he was a subscribing member, to popularize the best music among
the lowest class; he dwelt almost with passion on the difference between
the joy to be got out of such things and the common brutalizing joys of
the workman. And you could not have art without artists. In this again
he was only talking the commonplaces of his day. But to her they were
not commonplaces at all. She looked at him from time to time, her great
eyes lightening and deepening as it seemed with every fresh thrust of
his.

'I am grateful to you,' she said at last, with an involuntary outburst,
'I am _very_ grateful to you!'

And she gave a long sigh, as if some burden she had long borne in
patient silence had been loosened a little, if only by the fact of
speech about it. She was not convinced exactly. She was too strong a
nature to relinquish a principle without a period of meditative struggle
in which conscience should have all its dues. But her tone made his
heart leap. He felt in it a momentary self-surrender that, coming from
a creature of so rare a dignity, filled him with an exquisite sense of
power, and yet at the same time with a strange humility beyond words.

A day or two later he was the spectator of a curious little scene. An
aunt of the Leyburns living in Whinborough came to see them. She was
their father's youngest sister, and