He walked about his garden, he went into the house, he came out, he walked about again. he went in and dressed for dinner, he sat on his rustic bench, he smoked cigarette after cigarette.

“Ought I to have told her?  Ought I to tell her to-morrow?”

At moments there would come a lull in the turmoil, an interval of quiet, of apparent clearness; and the answer would seem perfectly plain.

“Of course, you ought to tell her.  Tell her—­and all will be well.  She has put herself in the supposititious woman’s place, and she says, ‘He ought to tell her.’  She says it earnestly, vehemently.  That means that if she were the woman, she would wish to be told.  She will despise the conventional barriers —­she will be touched, she will be moved.  ’No woman could be proof against such a compliment.’  Go to her to-morrow, and tell her—­and all will be well.”

At these moments he would look up towards the castle, and picture the morrow’s consummation; and his heart would have a convulsion.  Imagination flew on the wings of his desire.  She stood before him in all her sumptuous womanhood, tender and strong and glowing.  As he spoke, her eyes lightened, her eyes burned, the blood came and went in her cheeks; her lips parted.  Then she whispered something; and his heart leapt terribly; and he called her name—­“Beatrice!  Beatrice!” Her name expressed the inexpressible—­the adoring passion, the wild hunger and wild triumph of his soul.  But now she was moving towards him —­she was holding out her hands.  He caught her in his arms—­he held her yielding body in his arms.  And his heart leapt terribly, terribly.  And he wondered how he could endure, how he could live through, the hateful hours that must elapse before tomorrow would be to-day.

But “hearts, after leaps, ache.”  Presently the whirl would begin again; and then, by and by, in another lull, a contrary answer would seem equally plain.

“Tell her, indeed?  My dear man, are you mad?  She would simply be amazed, struck dumb, by your presumption.  I can see from here her incredulity—­I can see the scorn with which she would wither you.  It has never dimly occurred to her as conceivable that you would venture to be in love with her, that you would dare to lift your eyes to her—­you who are nothing, to her who is all.  Yes—­nothing, nobody.  In her view, you are just a harmless nobody, whose society she tolerates for kindness’ sake—­and faute de mieux.  It is precisely because she deems you a nobody—­because she is profoundly conscious of the gulf that separates you from her—­that she can condescend to be amiably familiar.  If you were of a rank even remotely approximating to her own, she would be a thousand times more circumspect.  Remember—­she does not dream that you are Felix Wildmay.  He is a mere name to her; and his story is an amusing little romance, perfectly external to herself, which she discusses with entirely impersonal interest.  Tell her by all means, if you like Say, ‘I am Wildmay—­you are Pauline.’  And see how amazed she will be, and how incensed, and how indignant.”