She shook her head; she could not see it.  She would admit none of the notorious errors, of the world; its backbiting, selfishness, coarseness, intrusiveness, infectiousness.  She was young.  She might, Willoughby thought, have let herself be led; she was not docile.  She must be up in arms as a champion of the world; and one saw she was hugging her dream of a romantic world, nothing else.  She spoilt the secret bower-song he delighted to tell over to her.  And how, Powers of Love! is love-making to be pursued if we may not kick the world out of our bower and wash our hands of it?  Love that does not spurn the world when lovers curtain themselves is a love—­is it not so?—­that seems to the unwhipped, scoffing world to go slinking into basiation’s obscurity, instead of on a glorious march behind the screen.  Our hero had a strong sentiment as to the policy of scorning the world for the sake of defending his personal pride and (to his honour, be it said) his lady’s delicacy.

The act of seeming put them both above the world, said retro Sathanas!  So much, as a piece of tactics:  he was highly civilized:  in the second instance, he knew it to be the world which must furnish the dry sticks for the bonfire of a woman’s worship.  He knew, too, that he was prescribing poetry to his betrothed, practicable poetry.  She had a liking for poetry, and sometimes quoted the stuff in defiance of his pursed mouth and pained murmur:  “I am no poet;” but his poetry of the enclosed and fortified bower, without nonsensical rhymes to catch the ears of women, appeared incomprehensible to her, if not adverse.  She would not burn the world for him; she would not, though a purer poetry is little imaginable, reduce herself to ashes, or incense, or essence, in honour of him, and so, by love’s transmutation, literally be the man she was to marry.  She preferred to be herself, with the egoism of women.  She said it:  she said:  “I must be myself to be of any value to you, Willoughby.”  He was indefatigable in his lectures on the aesthetics of love.  Frequently, for an indemnification to her (he had no desire that she should be a loser by ceasing to admire the world), he dwelt on his own youthful ideas; and his original fancies about the world were presented to her as a substitute for the theme.

Miss Middleton bore it well, for she was sure that he meant well.  Bearing so well what was distasteful to her, she became less well able to bear what she had merely noted in observation before; his view of scholarship; his manner toward Mr. Vernon Whitford, of whom her father spoke warmly; the rumour concerning his treatment of a Miss Dale.  And the country tale of Constantia Durham sang itself to her in a new key.  He had no contempt for the world’s praises.  Mr. Whitford wrote the letters to the county paper which gained him applause at various great houses, and he accepted it, and betrayed a tingling fright lest he should be the victim of a sneer of the world he contemned.  Recollecting his remarks,