verything.
Why did he doubt now? That he did doubt showed him the intensity of
his interest in Margaret. For love is humble, and undervalues self in
contrast with that which it desires. At this touchstone rank, fortune,
all that go with them, seemed poor. What were all these to a woman's
soul? But there were women enough, women enough in England, women more
beautiful than Margaret, doubtless as amiable and intellectual. Yet now
there was for him only one woman in the world. And Margaret showed no
sign. Was he about to make a fool of himself? If she should reject him
he would seem a fool to himself. If she accepted him he would seem a
fool to the whole circle that made his world at home. The situation was
intolerable. He would end it by going.

But he did not go. If he went today he could not see her tomorrow. To a
lover anything can be borne if he knows that he shall see her tomorrow.
In short, he could not go so long as there was any doubt about her
disposition towards him.

And a man is still reduced to this in the latter part of the nineteenth
century, notwithstanding all our science, all our analysis of the
passion, all our wise jabber about the failure of marriage, all our
commonsense about the relation of the sexes. Love is still a personal
question, not to be reasoned about or in any way disposed of except in
the old way. Maidens dream about it; diplomats yield to it; stolid
men are upset by it; the aged become young, the young grave, under its
influence; the student loses his appetite--God bless him! I like to
hear the young fellows at the club rattle on bravely, indifferent to
the whole thing--skeptical, in fact, about it. And then to see them,
one after another, stricken down, and looking a little sheepish and
not saying much, and by-and-by radiant. You would think they owned the
world. Heaven, I think, shows us no finer sarcasm than one of these
young skeptics as a meek family man.

Margaret and Mr. Lyon were much together.

And their talk, as always happens when two persons find themselves
much together, became more and more personal. It is only in books that
dialogues are abstract and impersonal. The Englishman told her about
his family, about the set in which he moved--and he had the English
frankness in setting it out unreservedly--about the life he led at
Oxford, about his travels, and so on to what he meant to do in the
world. Margaret in return had little to tell, her own life had been
so simple--