s of felicity, balancing their weeks of timidity and depression.
After his melancholy of the last two days, the tide of reaction had been
mounting within him, and the sight of Rose had carried it to its height.

She gave a little involuntary stare of astonishment. What had happened
to Robert's silent and finicking friend?

'I know nothing of Oxford,' she said a little primly, in answer to his
question. 'I never was there--but I never was anywhere, I have seen
nothing,' she added hastily, and, as Langham thought, bitterly.

'Except London, and the great world, and Madame Desforets!' he answered,
laughing. 'Is that so little?'

She flashed a quick, defiant look at him, as he mentioned Madame
Desforets, but his look was imperturbably kind and gay. She could not
help softening toward him. What magic had passed over him?

'Do you know,' said Langham, moving, 'that you are standing in a
draught, and that it has turned extremely cold?'

For she had left the passage-door wide open behind her, and as the
window was partially open the curtains were swaying hither and thither,
and her muslin dress was being blown in coils round her feet.

'So it has,' said Rose, shivering. 'I don't envy the Church people. You
haven't found me a book, Mr. Langham!'

'I will find you one in a minute, if you will come and read it by the
fire,' he said, with his hand on the door.

She glanced at the fire and at him, irresolute. His breath quickened.
She too had passed into another phase. Was it the natural effect of
night, of solitude, of sex? At any rate, she sank softly into the
armchair opposite to that in which he had been sitting.

'Find me an exciting one, please.'

Langham shut the door securely, and went back to the bookcase, his hand
trembling a little as it passed along the books. He found 'Villette' and
offered it to her. She took it, opened it, and appeared deep in it at
once. He took the hint and went back to his Montaigne.

The fire crackled cheerfully, the wind outside made every now and then a
sudden gusty onslaught on their silence, dying away again as abruptly
as it had risen. Rose turned the pages of her book, sitting a little
stiffly in her long chair, and Langham gradually began to find Montaigne
impossible to read. He became instead more and more alive to every
detail of the situation into which he had fallen. At last seeing, or
imagining, that the fire wanted attending to, he bent forward and thrust
the poker into i