She loved him.  Full surely did she love him, or such a woman would never have consented to brave the world; once in their project of flight, and next, even more endearingly when contemplated, in the sacrifice of her good name; not omitting that fervent memory of her pained submission, but a palpitating submission, to his caress.  She was in his arms again at the thought of it.  He had melted her, and won the confession of her senses by a surprise, and he owned that never had woman been so vigilantly self-guarded or so watchful to keep her lover amused and aloof.  Such a woman deserved long service.  But then the long service deserved its time of harvest.  Her surging look of reproach in submission pointed to the golden time, and as he was a man of honour, pledged to her for life, he had no remorse, and no scruple in determining to exact her dated promise, on this occasion deliberately.  She was the woman to be his wife; she was his mind’s mate:  they had hung apart in deference to mere scruples too long.  During the fierce battle of the Session she would be his help, his fountain of counsel; and she would be the rosy gauze-veiled more than cold helper and adviser, the being which would spur her womanly intelligence to acknowledge, on this occasion deliberately, the wisdom of the step.  They had been so close to it!  She might call it madness then:  now it was wisdom.  Each had complete experience of the other, and each vowed the step must be taken.  As to the secret communicated, he exulted in the pardonable cunning of the impulse turning him back to her house after the guests had gone, and the dexterous play of his bait on the line, tempting her to guess and quit her queenly guard.  Though it had not been distinctly schemed, the review of it in that light added to the enjoyment.  It had been dimly and richly conjectured as a hoped result.  Small favours from her were really worth, thrice worth, the utmost from other women.  They tasted the sweeter for the winning of them artfully—­an honourable thing in love.  Nature, rewarding the lover’s ingenuity and enterprise, inspires him with old Greek notions of right and wrong:  and love is indeed a fluid mercurial realm, continually shifting the principles of rectitude and larceny.  As long as he means nobly, what is there to condemn him?  Not she in her heart.  She was the presiding divinity.

And she, his Tony, that splendid Diana, was the woman the world abused!  Whom will it not abuse?

The slough she would have to plunge in before he could make her his own with the world’s consent, was already up to her throat.  She must, and without further hesitation, be steeped, that he might drag her out, washed of the imputed defilement, and radiant, as she was in character.  Reflection now said this; not impulse.  Her words rang through him.  At every meeting she said things to confound his estimate of the wits of women, or be remembered for some spirited ring they had:  A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird.  He murmured it and flew with her.  She quickened a vein of imagination that gave him entrance to a strangely brilliant sphere, above his own, where, she sustaining, he too could soar; and he did, scarce conscious of walking home, undressing, falling asleep.