“There is such a charming little room in there,” he said, stooping his head to her, “and so cool after this heat.  Won’t you try it?”

The energy of his bright eye took possession of her.  He led the way; she followed.  Her dress almost brushed Aldous Raeburn as she passed.

He took her into a tiny room.  There was no one else there, and he found a seat for her by an open window, where they were almost hidden from view by a stand of flowers.

As he sat down again by her, she saw that a decisive moment had come, and blanched almost to the colour of her dress.  Oh! what to do!  Her heart cried out vaguely to some power beyond itself for guidance, then gave itself up again to the wayward thirst for happiness.

He took her hand strongly in both his own, and bending towards her as she sat bowered among the scent and colours of the flowers, he made her a passionate declaration.  From the first moment that he had seen her under the Chiltern beeches, so he vowed, he had felt in her the supreme, incomparable attraction which binds a man to one woman, and one only.  His six weeks under her father’s roof had produced in him feelings which he knew to be wrong, without thereby finding in himself any power to check them.  They had betrayed him into a mad moment, which he had regretted bitterly because it had given her pain.  Otherwise—­his voice dropped and shook, his hand pressed hers—­“I lived for months on the memory of that one instant.”  But he had respected her suffering, her struggle, her need for rest of mind and body.  For her sake he had gone away into silence; he had put a force upon himself which had alone enabled him to get through his parliamentary work.

Then, with his first sight of her in that little homely room and dress—­so changed, but so lovely!—­everything—­admiration, passion—­had revived with double strength.  Since that meeting he must have often puzzled her, as he had puzzled himself.  His life had been a series of perplexities.  He was not his own master; he was the servant of a cause, in which—­however foolishly a mocking habit might have led him at times to be-little his own enthusiasms and hers—­his life and honour were engaged; and this cause and his part in it had been for long hampered, and all his clearness of vision and judgment dimmed by the pressure of a number of difficulties and worries he could not have discussed with her—­worries practical and financial, connected with the Clarion, with the experiments he had been carrying out on his estate, and with other troublesome matters.  He had felt a thousand times that his fortunes, political or private, were too doubtful and perilous to allow him to ask any woman to share them.—­Then, again, he had seen her—­and his resolution, his scruple, had melted in his breast!

Well! there were still troubles in front!  But he was no longer cowed by them.  In spite of them, he dared now to throw himself at her feet, to ask her to come and share a life of combat and of labour, to bring her beauty and her mind to the joint conduct of a great enterprise.  To her a man might show his effort and his toil,—­from her he might claim a sympathy it would be vain to ask of any smaller woman.