d from the
shop, "Duty is sometimes not a rose-coloured tie, but a heavy iron-hued
clog."

He strode on through the street towards the sign-post with "To Oxford"
inscribed thereon. And whether he spoke literally of the knapsack, or
metaphorically of duty, he murmured, as he strode,--

"A pedlar's pack that bows the bearer down."

CHAPTER VII.

KENELM might have reached Oxford that night, for he was a rapid and
untirable pedestrian; but he halted a little after the moon rose, and
laid himself down to rest beneath a new-mown haystack, not very far from
the high road.

He did not sleep. Meditatingly propped on his elbow, he said to
himself,--

"It is long since I have wondered at nothing. I wonder now: can this be
love,--really love,--unmistakably love? Pooh! it is impossible; the
very last person in the world to be in love with. Let us reason upon
it,--you, myself, and I. To begin with,--face! What is face? In a few
years the most beautiful face may be very plain. Take the Venus at
Florence. Animate her; see her ten years after; a chignon, front teeth
(blue or artificially white), mottled complexion, double chin,--all that
sort of plump prettiness goes into double chin. Face, bah! What man of
sense--what pupil of Welby, the realist--can fall in love with a face?
and even if I were simpleton enough to do so, pretty faces are as common
as daisies. Cecilia Travers has more regular features; Jessie Wiles a
richer colouring. I was not in love with them,--not a bit of it. Myself,
you have nothing to say there. Well, then, mind? Talk of mind, indeed!
a creature whose favourite companionship is that of butterflies, and who
tells me that butterflies are the souls of infants unbaptized. What an
article for 'The Londoner,' on the culture of young women! What a girl
for Miss Garrett and Miss Emily Faithfull! Put aside Mind as we have
done Face. What rests?--the Frenchman's ideal of happy marriage?
congenial circumstance of birth, fortune, tastes, habits. Worse still.
Myself, answer honestly, are you not floored?"

Whereon "Myself" took up the parable and answered, "O thou fool! why
wert thou so ineffably blessed in one presence? Why, in quitting that
presence, did Duty become so grim? Why dost thou address to me those
inept pedantic questionings, under the light of yon moon, which has
suddenly ceased to be to thy thoughts an astronomical body and has
become, forever and forever, identified in thy heart's dreams wi