So they sat for some minutes, Herminia with her eyes half-closed, drinking in to the full the delight of first love.  She could feel her heart beating.  At last Alan interposed, and began to speak to her.  The girl drew a long breath; then she sighed for a second, as she opened her eyes again.  Every curve of her bosom heaved and swayed mysteriously.  It seemed such a pity to let articulate words disturb that reverie.  Still, if Alan wished it.  For a woman is a woman, let Girton do its worst; and Herminia not less but rather more than the rest of them.

Then Alan began.  With her hand clasped in his, and fondling it while he spoke, he urged all he could urge to turn her from her purpose.  He pointed out to her how unwise, how irretrievable her position would be, if she once assumed it.  On such a road as that there is no turning back.  The die once cast, she must forever abide by it.  He used all arts to persuade and dissuade; all eloquence to save her from herself and her salvation.  If he loved her less, he said with truth, he might have spoken less earnestly.  It was for her own sake he spoke, because he so loved her.  He waxed hot in his eager desire to prevent her from taking this fatal step.  He drew his breath hard, and paused.  Emotion and anxiety overcame him visibly.

But as for Herminia, though she listened with affection and with a faint thrill of pleasure to much that he said, seeing how deeply he loved her, she leaned back from time to time, half weary with his eagerness, and his consequent iteration.  “Dear Alan,” she said at last, soothing his hand with her own, as a sister might have soothed it, “you talk about all this as though it were to me some new resolve, some new idea of my making.  You forget it is the outcome of my life’s philosophy.  I have grown up to it slowly.  I have thought of all this, and of hardly anything else, ever since I was old enough to think for myself about anything.  Root and branch, it is to me a foregone conclusion.  I love you.  You love me.  So far as I am concerned, there ends the question.  One way there is, and one way alone, in which I can give myself up to you.  Make me yours if you will; but if not, then leave me.  Only, remember, by leaving me, you won’t any the more turn me aside from my purpose.  You won’t save me from myself, as you call it; you will only hand me over to some one less fit for me by far than you are.”  A quiet moisture glistened in her eyes, and she gazed at him pensively.  “How wonderful it is,” she went on, musing.  “Three weeks ago, I didn’t know there was such a man in the world at all as you; and now—­why, Alan, I feel as if the world would be nothing to me without you.  Your name seems to sing in my ears all day long with the song of the birds, and to thrill through and through me as I lie awake on my pillow with the cry of the nightjar.  Yet, if you won’t take me on my own terms, I know well what will happen.  I