once your lips have pronounced the
words of surrender, and our spirits are transported together to the
enchanted isle."

"You talk about me going over to this isle--this Cyprus," he said; "but
it's a long journey, and I can't afford it. How _you_ come and go, I
don't know; but I've not been brought up to it myself. I can't flash
across like a telegram!"

"Trust all to me," she said. "Is not your love strong enough for that?"

"Not quite yet," he answered; "it's coming on. Only, you see, it's a
serious step to take, and I naturally wish to feel my way. I declare,
the more I gaze upon the--the elegant form and figger which I see before
me, the stronger and the more irresistible comes over me a burning
desire to think the whole thing carefully over. And if you only allowed
me a little longer to gaze (I've no time to myself except in the
evenings), I don't think it would be long before this affair reached a
'appy termination--I don't indeed!"

"Gaze, then," she said, smiling--"gaze to your soul's content."

"I mean no offence," he represented, having felt his way to a stroke of
supreme cunning, "but when I feel there's a goddess inside of this
statue, I don't know how it is exactly, but it puts me off. I can't fix
my thoughts; the--the passion don't ferment as it ought. If, supposing
now, you was to withdraw yourself and leave me the statue? I could gaze
on it, and think of thee, and Cyprus, and all the rest of it, more
comfortable, so to speak, than what I can when you're animating of it,
and making me that nervous, words can't describe it!"

He hardly dared to hope that so lame and transparent a device would
succeed with her; but, as he had previously found, there was a certain
spice of credulity and simplicity in her nature, which made it possible
to impose upon her occasionally.

"It may be so," she said. "I overawe thee, perchance?"

"Very much so," said he, promptly. "You don't intend it, I know; but
it's a fact."

"I will leave you to meditate upon the charms so faintly shadowed in
this image, remembering that whatever of loveliness you find herein will
be multiplied ten thousand-fold in the actual Aphrodite! Remain, then;
ponder and gaze--and love!"

He waited for a little while after the statue was silent, and then took
up the sacking left for him by Braddle; twice he attempted to throw it
over the marble, and twice he recoiled. "It's no use," he said, "I can't
do it; they must do it themselves!"

He