Loveday was left with that most dangerous of all passions—­the passion for an idea.  Though she was ignorant of the fact, it was not Miss Le Pettit she adored, it was beauty; not silk underskirts that rustled in her ear, but the music of the spheres; a new ideal she saw not in the angelic visitant, but in herself.  She, too, would be all white and dazzling, was accounted worthy to follow in the same steps, were it but in those of a dance.  She made the common mistake of a lover—­she imagined she was in love with another human being, while in reality she was in love with those feelings in herself which that other had evoked.

Never did aspiring saint of old, impelled by ecstasy, cling closer to a crucifix as the symbol of the loved one than did Loveday to that notion of the white garb which must be hers.  It was, indeed, a symbol to her, the symbol of everything she had unwittingly craved and starved for, of everything she had, could not but feel she had, in herself which was lacked by those who jeered at her.  And, though she knew it not, nor would have understood it, she was a symbol-lover, than which there is no form of lover more dangerous in life—­or more endangered by the chances of it.  For he who loves another human being gives his heart in fee, but he who loves an idea gives his soul.

CHAPTER IV:  IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER’S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS

Chapter IV

IN WHICH THE ONION-SELLER’S DAUGHTER FEELS HERSELF A GODDESS

Loveday bore home the milk in a maze of bliss, and staying not for her supper, for no hunger of the body was upon her, turned and went out again into the glow of the evening.  Had she been as full of sensibility as a young lady she would have wandered straight away from Upper Farm, forgotten the milk, and not thought of it again, till, returning with the upgetting of the moon, her aunt had met her with vulgar reproaches.  What a charming scene could then have been staged, of sensitive genius misunderstood by coarse-grained labour; of vision-drunken youth berated by undreaming age!  But she was not a young lady, and could derive no felicity from forgetfulness of such a kind, for with the poor the urgencies of the immediate task are raised to such compelling interest that only a genius could neglect them with satisfaction.  Therefore Loveday never thought of forgetting the milk for her aunt, but her exultation was of such a powerful sort that it upheld her through the commonplaces of routine without her perceiving the incongruity which would have jarred on one of a finer upbringing.

She placed the milk on the table, set out the bread and soaked pilchards, found what was left of the cheese, and went hastily forth lest her aunt should stay her.