tarlight--he a little in advance
pointing, she following, with her eyes lifted to the celestial gates
shining in the distance. Sometimes his arms would be thrown about her.
Sometimes he would press a kiss upon her face. She was his, his, and he
was her saviour. The evening died, the room darkened, and John's dream
continued in the twilight, and the ringing of the dinner bell and the
disturbance of dressing did not destroy his thoughts. Like fumes of
wine they hung about him during the evening, and from time to time he
looked at Kitty.

But although he had so far surrendered himself, he did not escape
without another revulsion of feeling. A sudden realisation of what his
life would be under the new conditions did not fail to frighten him, and
he looked back with passionate regret on his abandoned dreams. But his
nature was changed, abstention he knew was beyond his strength, and
after many struggles, each of which was feebler than the last, he
determined to propose to Kitty on the first suitable occasion.

Then came the fear of refusal. Often he was paralysed with pain,
sometimes he would morbidly allow his thoughts to dwell on the moment
when he would hear her say, it was impossible, that she did not and
could not love him. The young grey light of the eyes would be fixed upon
him; she would speak her sorrow, and her thin hands would hang by her
side in the simple attitude that was so peculiar to her. And he mused
willingly on the long meek life of grief that would then await him. He
would belong to God; his friar's frock would hide all; it would be the
habitation, and the Gothic walls he would raise, the sepulchre of his
love....

"But no, no, she shall be mine," he cried out, moved in his very
entrails. Why should she refuse him? What reason had he to believe that
she would not have him? He thought of how she had answered his questions
on this and that occasion, how she had looked at him; he recalled every
gesture and every movement with wonderful precision, and then he lapsed
into a passionate consideration of the general attitude of mind she
evinced towards him. He arrived at no conclusion, but these meditations
were full of penetrating delight. Sometimes he was afflicted with an
intense shyness, and he avoided her; and when Mrs Norton, divining his
trouble, sent them to walk in the garden, his heart warmed to his
mother, and he regretted his past harshness.

And this idyll was lived about the beautiful Italian h