dying, wholly by reason of her
self-enforced poverty. To marry this man was obviously the course of
common sense, to refuse him was impolitic temerity. There was reason
in this. But there was more behind than a hundred reasons--a woman's
gratitude and her impulse to be kind.

The wavering of her mind was visible in her tell-tale face. He noticed
it, and caught at the opportunity.

They were standing by the ruinous foundations of an old mill in the
midst of a meadow. Between grey and half-overgrown stonework--the only
signs of masonry remaining--the water gurgled down from the old millpond
to a lower level, under the cloak of rank broad leaves--the sensuous
natures of the vegetable world. On the right hand the sun, resting on
the horizon-line, streamed across the ground from below copper-coloured
and lilac clouds, stretched out in flats beneath a sky of pale soft
green. All dark objects on the earth that lay towards the sun were
overspread by a purple haze, against which a swarm of wailing gnats
shone forth luminously, rising upward and floating away like sparks of
fire.

The stillness oppressed and reduced her to mere passivity. The only
wish the humidity of the place left in her was to stand motionless.
The helpless flatness of the landscape gave her, as it gives all such
temperaments, a sense of bare equality with, and no superiority to, a
single entity under the sky.

He came so close that their clothes touched. 'Will you try to love me?
Do try to love me!' he said, in a whisper, taking her hand. He had never
taken it before. She could feel his hand trembling exceedingly as it
held hers in its clasp.

Considering his kindness to her brother, his love for herself, and
Edward's fickleness, ought she to forbid him to do this? How truly
pitiful it was to feel his hand tremble so--all for her! Should she
withdraw her hand? She would think whether she would. Thinking, and
hesitating, she looked as far as the autumnal haze on the marshy
ground would allow her to see distinctly. There was the fragment of a
hedge--all that remained of a 'wet old garden'--standing in the middle
of the mead, without a definite beginning or ending, purposeless and
valueless. It was overgrown, and choked with mandrakes, and she could
almost fancy she heard their shrieks.... Should she withdraw her hand?
No, she could not withdraw it now; it was too late, the act would not
imply refusal. She felt as one in a boat without oars, drifting with