‘But you are mine!’ said Alvan.  ’You feel it as I do.  There can be no real impediment?’

She gave an empty sigh that sought to be a run of entreaties.  In fear of his tongue she caught at words to baffle it, senseless of their imbecility:  ’Do not insist:  yes, in time:  they will—­they—­they may.  My father is not very well . . . my mother:  she is not very well.  They are neither of them very well:  not at present!—­Spare them at present.’

To avoid being carried away, she flung herself from the centaur’s back to the disenchanting earth; she separated herself from him in spirit, and beheld him as her father and mother and her circle would look on this pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his hissing reputation—­for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and the geese of the world.  She saw him in their eyes, quite coldly:  which imaginative capacity was one of the remarkable feats of cowardice, active and cold of brain even while the heart is active and would be warm.

He read something of her weakness.  ’And supposing I decide that it must be?’

‘How can I supplicate you!’ she replied with a shiver, feeling that she had lost her chance of slipping from his grasp, as trained women of the world, or very sprightly young wits know how to do at the critical moment:  and she had lost it by being too sincere.  Her cowardice appeared to her under that aspect.

‘Now I perceive that the task is harder,’ said Alvan, seeing her huddled in a real dismay.  ’Why will you not rise to my level and fear nothing!  The way is clear:  we have only to take the step.  Have you not seen tonight that we are fated for one another?  It is your destiny, and trifling with destiny is a dark business.  Look at me.  Do you doubt my having absolute control of myself to bear whatever they put on me to bear, and hold firmly to my will to overcome them!  Oh! no delays.’

‘Yes!’ she cried; ‘yes, there must be.’

‘You say it?’

The courage to repeat her cry was wanting.

She trembled visibly:  she could more readily have bidden him bear her hence than have named a day for the interview with her parents; but desperately she feared that he would be the one to bid; and he had this of the character of destiny about him, that she felt in him a maker of facts.  He was her dream in human shape, her eagle of men, and she felt like a lamb in the air; she had no resistance, only terror of his power, and a crushing new view of the nature of reality.

‘I see!’ said he, and his breast fell.  Her timid inability to join with him for instant action reminded him that he carried many weights:  a bad name among her people and class, and chains in private.  He was old enough to strangle his impulses, if necessary, or any of the brood less fiery than the junction of his passions.  ’Well, well!—­but we might so soon have broken through the hedge into the broad highroad!  It