her, his eyes emphasised the appeal
implied, though not expressed, in what he said--intense appeal to her
for sympathy, forbearance, mutual respect, through all acuteness of
difference. His look both promised and implored.

He bad spoken to her but very rarely or indirectly as yet of his own
religious or philosophical beliefs. She was in a stage when such things
interested her but little, and reticence in personal matters was so much
the law of his life that even to her expansion was difficult. So
that--inevitably--she was arrested, for the moment, as any quick
perception must be, by the things that unveil character.

Then an upheaval of indignant feeling swept the impression away. All
that he said might be ideally, profoundly true--_but_--the red blood of
the common life was lacking in every word of it! He ought to be
incapable of saying it _now_. Her passionate question was, how could he
_argue_--how could he hold and mark the ethical balance--when a _woman_
was suffering, when _children_ were to be left fatherless? Besides--the
ethical balance itself--does it not alter according to the hands that
hold it--poacher or landlord, rich or poor?

But she was too exhausted to carry on the contest in words. Both felt it
would have to be renewed. But she said to herself secretly that Mr.
Wharton, when he got to work, would alter the whole aspect of affairs.
And she knew well that her vantage-ground as towards Aldous was strong.

Then at last he was free to turn his whole attention for a little to her
and her physical state, which made him miserable. He had never imagined
that any one, vigorous and healthy as she was, could look so worn out in
so short a time. She let him talk to her--lament, entreat, advise--and
at last she took advantage of his anxiety and her admissions to come to
the point, to plead that the marriage should be put off.

She used the same arguments that she had done to her mother.

"How can I bear to be thinking of these things?"--she pointed a shaking
finger at the dress patterns lying scattered on the table--"with this
agony, this death, under my eyes?"

It was a great blow to him, and the practical inconveniences involved
were great. But the fibre of him--of which she had just felt the
toughness--was delicate and sensitive as her own, and after a very short
recoil he met her with great chivalry and sweetness, agreeing that
everything should be put off for six weeks, till Easter in fact. She
would