Oh, true and right, but she was gloriously beautiful!  Day by day she surpassed the wondrous Browny of old days.  All women were eclipsed by her.  She was that fire in the night which lights the night and draws the night to look at it.  And more:  this queen of women was beginning to have a mind at work.  One saw already the sprouting of a mind repressed.  She had a distinct ability; the good ambition to use her qualities.  She needed life and air—­that is, comprehension of her, encouragement, the companion mate.  With what strength would she now endow him!  The pride in the sharp imagination of possessing her whispered a boast of the strength her mate would have from her.  His need and her need rushed together somewhere down the skies.  They could not, he argued, be separated eternally.

He had to leave her.  Selina, shocked at a boldness she could not understand in herself, begged him to stay and tell her of Switzerland and Alpine flowers and herbs, and the valleys for the gold beetle and the Apollo butterfly.  Aminta hinted that Lord Ormont might expect to find him there, if he came the next morning; but she would not try to persuade, and left the decision with him, loving him for the pain he inflicted by going.

Why, indeed, should he stay?  Both could ask; they were one in asking.  Anguish balanced pleasure in them both.  The day of the pleasure was heaven to remember, heaven to hope for; not so heavenly to pray for.  The praying for it, each knew, implored their joint will to decree the perilous blessing.  A shadowy sentiment of duty and rectitude, born of what they had suffered, hung between them and the prayer for a renewal, that would renew the tempting they were conscious of when the sweet, the strained, throbbing day was over.  They could hope for chance to renew it, and then they would be irresponsible.  Then they would think and wish discreetly, so as to have it a happiness untainted.  In refusing now to take another day or pray for it, they deserved that chance should grant it.

Aminta had said through Selina the utmost her self-defences could allow.  But the idea of a final parting cut too cruelly into her life, and she murmured:  ‘I shall see you before you go for good?’

‘I will come, here or in London.’

‘I can trust?’

‘Quite certain.’

A meeting of a few hasty minutes involved none of the dangers of a sunny, long summer day; and if it did, the heart had its claims, the heart had its powers of resistance.  Otherwise we should be base verily.

He turned on a bow to leave her before there was a motion for the offer of her hand.

After many musings and frettings, she reached the wisdom of that.  Wisdom was her only nourishment now.  A cold, lean dietary it is; but he dispensed it, and it fed her, or kept her alive.  It became a proud feeling that she had been his fellow in the achievement of a piece of wisdom; though the other feeling, that his hand’s kind formal touching, without pressure of hers, would have warmed her to go through the next interview with her lord, mocked at pure satisfaction.  Did he distrust himself?  Or was it to spare her?  But if so, her heart was quite bare to him!  But she knew it was.