strious
was he that his secondary reputation would not injure him.

She who now accuses him was then a "young beauty, round and sound as a
mountain-apple," ingenuous, ardent, wealthy--the typical "poor pretty
thoughtful thing" with aspirations, for she tried to sing and draw, read
verse and thought she understood--at any rate, loved the Great, the
Good, and the Beautiful. But to him her "culture" seemed pitifully
amateurish--him who took the arts in his stride, as it were, who could
float wide and free over the whole province of them, as the sea-gull
floats over the waters. Nevertheless he had walked and talked with her
"twice" at the little remote, unspoilt seaside resort where they had
chanced to meet. It was strange that more people had not discovered it,
so fine were the air and scenery--but it remained unvisited, and thus
the two were thrown together. One scorching noon they met; he invited
her to a stroll on the cliff-road. She took his arm, and (looking back
upon it now) remembers that as she took it she smiled "sillily," and
made some banal speech about the blazing, brazen sea below. For she felt
that he had guessed her secret, timid hope. . . . Now, recalling the
episode (it is he who has given the signal for such reminiscence), she
asks him what effect his divination of her trembling heart had had on
him that day.

"Did you determine, as we stepped
O'er the lone stone fence, 'Let me get
Her for myself, and what's the earth
With all its art, verse, music, worth--
Compared with love, found, gained, and kept?'"

For she knows, and she knew that _he_ knew, the prompt reply which would
come if he "blurted out" a certain question--come in her instant
silence, her downward look, the rush of colour to her cheek and brow.
They would have returned from that walk as plighted lovers--he, old,
famous, weary; she with her youth and beauty, her ardour and her
wealth, all rapturously given, and with the happy prospect added to all
other joys of being certain of applause for the distinction shown in her
choice! . . . A perfect hour for both--while it lasted.

But (so she now reads his gone-by cogitations for him) it would not
last. The daily life would reclaim them; Paris would follow, with full
time for both to reason and reflect. . . . And thus (still interpreting
to him the imagined outcome of his musings) she would regret that choice
which had seemed to show her of the elect--for after all