the
Apostle Paul; who was harsh in government, and in familiarity ironic;
who ignored all sensuous pleasure:--he was very different from the
miner. Gertrude herself was rather contemptuous of dancing; she had not
the slightest inclination towards that accomplishment, and had never
learned even a Roger de Coverley. She was puritan, like her father,
high-minded, and really stern. Therefore the dusky, golden softness of
this man's sensuous flame of life, that flowed off his flesh like the
flame from a candle, not baffled and gripped into incandescence by
thought and spirit as her life was, seemed to her something wonderful,
beyond her.

He came and bowed above her. A warmth radiated through her as if she had
drunk wine.

"Now do come and have this one wi' me," he said caressively. "It's easy,
you know. I'm pining to see you dance."

She had told him before she could not dance. She glanced at his humility
and smiled. Her smile was very beautiful. It moved the man so that he
forgot everything.

"No, I won't dance," she said softly. Her words came clean and ringing.

Not knowing what he was doing--he often did the right thing by
instinct--he sat beside her, inclining reverentially.

"But you mustn't miss your dance," she reproved.

"Nay, I don't want to dance that--it's not one as I care about."

"Yet you invited me to it."

He laughed very heartily at this.

"I never thought o' that. Tha'rt not long in taking the curl out of me."

It was her turn to laugh quickly.

"You don't look as if you'd come much uncurled," she said.

"I'm like a pig's tail, I curl because I canna help it," he laughed,
rather boisterously.

"And you are a miner!" she exclaimed in surprise.

"Yes. I went down when I was ten."

She looked at him in wondering dismay.

"When you were ten! And wasn't it very hard?" she asked.

"You soon get used to it. You live like th' mice, an' you pop out at
night to see what's going on."

"It makes me feel blind," she frowned.

"Like a moudiwarp!" he laughed. "Yi, an' there's some chaps as does
go round like moudiwarps." He thrust his face forward in the blind,
snout-like way of a mole, seeming to sniff and peer for direction. "They
dun though!" he protested naively. "Tha niver seed such a way they get
in. But tha mun let me ta'e thee down some time, an' tha can see for
thysen."

She looked at him, startled. This was a new tract of life suddenly
opened before her. She realised the life of t