And she knew that it was not absurd; she knew herself worthy of love’s belated condescension—­not Raoul’s; for the moment she scarcely thought of Raoul; for the moment Raoul’s image grew faint and indefinite in the glory of being loved.  Instinct, too, thrust it into the background; for as Raoul grew definite so must his youth, his circumstances, the world’s laughter, the barriers never to be overcome.  But merely to be loved, and to rest in that knowledge awhile—­here were no barriers.  The thing had happened:  it was:  nothing could forbid or efface it.

Yet when she reached home, after forcing the astonished Mercury to canter up the entire length of Bayfield hill, she must walk straight to her room, and study her face in the glass.

“It has happened to you—­to you!  Why has it not transfigured you?—­ but then people would guess.  Your teeth stand out—­well, not so very prominently—­but they stand out, and that is why foreigners laugh at Englishwomen.  Yes, it has happened to you; but why? how?” It so happened that she must meet him the next day.  Narcissus had engaged him to make drawings of the Bayfield pavement, a new series to supersede hers in an enlarged edition of the treatise.  Every one of the tessellae was to be drawn to scale, and she must meet him to-morrow in the library with her brother and receive instructions, for she had promised to help in taking measurements.

When the time came, and she entered the library, she did not indeed dare to lift her eyes.  But Narcissus, already immersed in calculations, scarcely looked up from his paper.  “Ah, there you are!  Have you brought the India-ink?” he asked, and after a minute she marvelled at her own self-possession.  Even when he left them to work out the measurements together (and it flashed upon her that henceforth they would often be left together, her immunity being taken for granted), she kept her head bowed over the papers and managed to control her voice to put one or two ordinary questions—­until the pencil dropped from her fingers and she felt her hand imprisoned.

“Dorothea!”

“Oh, please, no!” she entreated hoarsely.  “M.  Raoul—!”

“Charles—­” She attempted to draw her hand away; but, failing, lifted her eyes for mercy.  They were sick and troubled.  “Charles,” he insisted.

“Charles, then.”  She relented and he kissed her gaily.  It was as if she drank in the kiss and, the next moment, recoiled from it.  He released her hand and waited, watching her.  She stood upright by the table, her shoulder turned to him, her eyes gazing through the long window upon the green stretch of lawn.  She was trembling slightly.

“It—­it hurts like a wound,” she murmured, and her hand went up to her breast.  “But you must listen, please.  You know—­better than I—­that this is the end.  Oh, yes”—­as he would have interrupted—­“it is beautiful—­for me.  But I am old and you are a boy, and it is all quite silly.  Please listen:  even apart from this, it would be quite silly and could end nowhere.”