was going to
say was that my recollection of her in that one moment would have been
the one precious thing left for me to treasure through the
pitch-darkness.... You remember--or perhaps not--that about a hand's
breadth of it--the desert, you know--shining alone in the salt leagues
round about...."

"N-no. I don't think I do. Is it ... a ... Coleridge?"

"No--Robert Browning. He'd be new to you. You would hardly know him.
However, I should try to forget the rest of the desert this time."

The Earl did not follow, naturally, and changed the subject. "It is very
late," he said, "and I have only time to say what I came to say. You may
rely on my not standing arbitrarily in the way of my daughter's wishes
when the time comes--and it has not come yet--for looking at that side
of the subject. It can only come when it is absolutely certain that she
knows her own mind. She is too young to be allowed to take the most
important step in life under the influence of a romantic--it may be
Quixotic--impulse. I have just had a long talk with her mother about it,
and I am forced to the conclusion that Gwen's motives are not so unmixed
as a girl's should be, to justify bystanders in allowing her to act upon
them--bystanders I mean who would have any right of interference.... I
am afraid I am not very clear, but I shrink from saying what may seem
unfeeling...."

"Probably you would not hurt me, and I should deserve it, if you did."

"What I mean is that Gwen's impulse is ... is derived from ... from, in
short, your unhappy accident. I would not go so far as to say that she
has schemed a compensation for this cruel disaster ... which we need
hardly be so gloomy about yet awhile, it seems to me. But this I do
say"--here the Earl seemed to pick up heart and find his words
easier--"that if Gwen has got that idea I thoroughly sympathize with
her. I give you my word, Mr. Torrens, that not an hour passes, for me,
without a thought of the same kind. I mean that I should jump at any
chance of making it up to you, for mere ease of mind. But I have nothing
to give that would meet the case. Gwen has a treasure--herself! It is
another matter whether she should be allowed to dispose of it her own
way, for her own sake. Her mother and I may both feel it our duty to
oppose it."

Adrian said in an undertone, most dejectedly: "You would be right. How
could I complain?" Then it seemed to him that his words struck a false
note, and he tried to qualify