more
than I could make plain the ways in which nature works to bring all her
great and marvelous mysteries to pass. Lettice's achievement, like her
resolution, argued both heart and intellect. Alan would not have yielded
to anyone else, and he yielded to her because he loved her with the
feelings and the understanding together. She had mastered his affections
and his intelligence at the same time: she left him to hunger and thirst
up to the moment of his abject abasement, and then she came unasked,
unhoped, from her towering height to his lowest deep, and gave
him--herself!

"Do you remember," he said to her once, when he had got her to talk of
her successful story, "that bit of Browning which you quote near the
end? Did you ever think that I could be infatuated enough to apply the
words to myself, and take comfort from them in my trouble?"

She blushed and trembled as he looked at her for an answer.

"I meant you to do it!".

"And I knew you meant it!" he said, not without a dangerous touch of
triumph in his voice. "If I were a little bolder than I am, I would
carry you to another page of the poet whom we love, and ask if you ever
remembered the words of Constance--words that you did not quote----"

Ten times more deeply she blushed at this, knowing almost by instinct
the lines of which he thought. Had he not asked her to read "In a
Balcony" to him the night before, and had she not found it impossible to
keep her voice from trembling when she read Constance's passionate
avowal of her love?

"I know the thriftier way
Of giving--haply, 'tis the wiser way;
Meaning to give a treasure, I might dole
Coin after coin out (each, as that were all,
With a new largess still at each despair),
And force you keep in sight the deed, preserve
Exhaustless till the end my part and yours,
My giving and your taking; both our joys
Dying together. Is it the wiser way?
I choose the simpler; I give all at once.
Know what you have to trust to trade upon!
Use it, abuse it--anything, but think
Hereafter, 'Had I known she loved me so,
And what my means, I might have thriven with it.'
This is your means. I give you all myself."

And in truth, that was the gift which Lettice offered to him--a gift of
herself without stint or grudging, a gift complete, open-handed, to be
measured by his acceptance, not limited by her reservation, Alan knew
it; knew that absolu