h him as she would, she would be his saint always,
unquestioned, unarraigned.

But with such a memory in his mind it was impossible that any man, least
of all a man of Elsmere's temperament, could be very hopeless. Oh yes,
he had been rash, foolhardy. Do such divine creatures stoop to mortal
men as easily as he had dreamt? He recognises all the difficulties, he
enters into the force of all the ties that bind her--or imagines that he
does. But he is a man and her lover: and if she loves him, in the end
love will conquer--must conquer. For his more modern sense, deeply
Christianised as it is, assumes almost without argument the sacredness
of passion and its claim--wherein a vast difference between himself and
that solitary wrestler in Marrisdale.

Meanwhile he kept all his hopes and fears to himself. Mrs. Thornburgh
was dying to talk to him; but though his mobile, boyish temperament made
it impossible for him to disguise his change of mood, there was in him a
certain natural dignity which life greatly developed, but which made it
always possible for him to hold his own against curiosity and
indiscretion. Mrs. Thornburgh had to hold her peace. As for the vicar,
he developed what were for him a surprising number of new topics of
conversation, and in the late afternoon took Elsmere a run up the fells
to the nearest fragment of the Roman road which runs, with such
magnificent disregard of the humours of Mother Earth, over the very top
of High Street towards Penrith and Carlisle.

Next day it looked as though after many waverings the characteristic
Westmoreland weather had descended upon them in good earnest. From early
morn till late evening the valley was wrapped in damp clouds or moving
rain, which swept down from the west through the great basin of the
hills, and rolled along the course of the river, wrapping trees and
fells and houses in the same misty cheerless drizzle. Under the outward
pall of rain, indeed, the valley was renewing its summer youth; the
river was swelling with an impetuous music through all its dwindled
channels; the crags flung out white waterfalls again, which the heat had
almost dried away; and by noon the whole green hollow was vocal with the
sounds of water--water flashing and foaming in the river, water leaping
downwards from the rocks, water dripping steadily from the larches and
sycamores and the slate-eaves of the houses.

Elsmere sat indoors reading up the history of the parish system of
S