The three, this man and his two of the tribe, upon whom Clotilde’s attention centred, with a comparison in her mind too sacred to be other than profane (comparisons will thrust themselves on minds disordered), dropped to the cushions of the double-seated sofa, by one side of which she cowered over her wool-work, willing to dwindle to a pin’s head if her insignificance might enable her to hear the words of the speaker.  He pursued his talk:  there was little danger of not hearing him.  There was only the danger of feeling too deeply the spell of his voice.  His voice had the mellow fulness of the clarionet.  But for the subject, she could have fancied a noontide piping of great Pan by the sedges.  She had never heard a continuous monologue so musical, so varied in music, amply flowing, vivacious, interwovenly the brook, the stream, the torrent:  a perfect natural orchestra in a single instrument.  He had notes less pastorally imageable, notes that fired the blood, with the ranging of his theme.  The subject became clearer to her subjugated wits, until the mental vivacity he roused on certain impetuous phrases of assertion caused her pride to waken up and rebel as she took a glance at herself, remembering that she likewise was a thinker, deemed in her society an original thinker, an intrepid thinker and talker, not so very much beneath this man in audacity of brain, it might be.  He kindled her thus, and the close-shut but expanded and knew the fretting desire to breathe out the secret within it, and be appreciated in turn.

The young flower of her sex burned to speak, to deliver an opinion.  She was unaccustomed to yield a fascinated ear.  She was accustomed rather to dictate and be the victorious performer, and though now she was not anxious to occupy the pulpit—­being too strictly bred to wish for a post publicly in any of the rostra—­and meant still less to dispossess the present speaker of the place he filled so well, she yearned to join him:  and as that could not be done by a stranger approving, she panted to dissent.  A young lady cannot so well say to an unknown gentleman:  ’You have spoken truly, sir,’ as, ‘That is false!’ for to speak in the former case would be gratuitous, and in the latter she is excused by the moral warmth provoking her.  Further, dissent rings out finely, and approval is a feeble murmur—­a poor introduction of oneself.  Her moral warmth was ready and waiting for the instigating subject, but of course she was unconscious of the goad within.  Excitement wafted her out of herself, as we say, or out of the conventional vessel into the waves of her troubled nature.  He had not yet given her an opportunity for dissenting; she was compelled to agree, dragged at his chariot-wheels in headlong agreement.