ars, and, though you were a child when we first spoke to each
other, I foresaw then what I tell you now. Every woman that I meet I
compare with you; and if I imagine the ideal woman she has your face
and your mind. I should have spoken when I was here last autumn, but I
felt that I had no right to ask you to share my life as long as it
remained so valueless. You see'--he smiled--'how I have grown in my own
esteem. I suppose that is always the first effect of a purpose strongly
conceived. Or should it be just the opposite, and have I only given you
a proof that I snatch at rewards before doing the least thing to merit
them?'

Something in these last sentences jarred upon her, and gave her courage
to speak a thought which had often come to her in connection with
Egremont.

'I think that a woman does not reason in that way if her deepest
feelings are pledged. If I were able to go with you and share your life
I shouldn't think I was rewarding you, but that you were offering me a
great happiness. It is my loss that I can only watch you from a
distance.'

The words moved him. It was not with conscious insincerity that he
spoke of his love and his intellectual aims as interdependent, yet he
knew that Annabel revealed the truer mind.

'And my desire is for the happiness of your love!' he exclaimed.
'Forget that pedantry--always my fault. I cannot feel sure that my
other motives will keep their force, but I know that this desire will
be only stronger in me as time goes on.'

Yet when she kept silence the habit of his thought again uttered itself.

'I shall pursue this work that I have undertaken, because, loving you,
I dare not fall below the highest life of which I am capable. I know
that you can see into my nature with those clear eyes of yours. I could
not love you if I did not feel that you were far above me. I shall
never be worthy of you, but I shall never cease in my striving to
become so.'

The quickening of her blood, which at first troubled her, had long
since subsided. She could now listen to him, and think of her reply
almost with coldness. There was an unreality in the situation which
made her anxious to bring the dialogue to an end.

'I have all faith in you,' she said. 'I hope--I feel assured--that
something will come of your work; but it will only be so if you pursue
it for its own sake.'

The simple truth of this caused him to droop his eyes again with a
sense of shame. He grew impatient with himself