to oneself, there is intoxication within
that cup. Though its brilliant walls are white, they are not so because
they hold thin water or turgid milk or yet vacancy. Of the nature of
porcelain, they are clear and brilliant, for as such they left the
potter's hands; but that faint flush stealing through them tells us
that that within is wine. And as the purity of a cup like this is
different from that of a clean, thick, common china cup standing empty
on the board, so was Lucia different from the ordinary virtuous English
girl. And for her I would do and suffer much, and feel glad in it. I
looked upon her as this vase, and since I had known her I had kept my
hand clean, that one day I might take it without remorse. And in my
treatment of herself I acted as I did because I saw that, as yet, her
passions and her nature slumbered, just as the wine, unshaken, is
steady within the cup.

Now, in my present helpless condition, to merely wake and rouse them,
to distract and disturb her, and lift her out of her art, to draw her
half from her own life, before I could take her wholly into my own,
seemed a sacrilegious cruelty. And this was why, from the commencement
of our engagement, I had said to myself--On this one condition only.

This was why, on the evening when I put the circlet of the engagement
ring over the delicate finger, I had not touched the lips thanking me.
I knew I could not kiss her coldly. These things depend upon one's
nature. Some men shake hands listlessly. I cannot. If I take a friend's
hand I grasp it warmly. How then, here, with those passive lips under
mine, could I prevent them from drawing in the enthusiasm from my own?
And this once done, I did not know how it might stir in her, and break
up her life and turn her aside from the tranquil path of abstraction
and occupation she was following now. I am not saying that, as a rule,
a woman waits for her lover's kiss to arouse her. On the contrary, I am
well aware that most women are uncommonly wide-awake from their
thirteenth year, and it is a very old-fashioned and quite exploded idea
to suppose that the springs of their nature lie dormant until one
particular individual unlocks them. I am only saying that this girl was
as yet entirely given over to her genius, and happy in it; and I loved
her too well to weaken an impulse towards art which she could gratify,
and create an impulse towards love which I could not for so long
satisfy. So with all this in my br