makes the tea, and sets the table, and brings out her
pistolets, and offers them to Monsieur, and it is all very simple and
idyllic. So is the scene where Crimsworth, without our knowing exactly
how he does it, declares himself to Frances. The dialogue is half in
French, and does not lend itself to quotation, but it compares very
favourably with the more daring comedy of courtship in _Jane Eyre_.
Frances is delicious in her very solidity, her absence of abandonment.
She refuses flatly to give up her teaching at Crimsworth's desire,
Crimsworth, who will have six thousand francs a year.

"'How rich you are, Monsieur!' And then she stirred uneasily in my arms.
'Three thousand francs!' she murmured, 'while I get only twelve
hundred!' She went on faster. 'However, it must be so for the present;
and, Monsieur, were you not saying something about my giving up my
place? Oh no! I shall hold it fast'; and her little fingers emphatically
tightened on mine.

"'Think of marrying you to be kept by you, Monsieur! I could not do it;
and how dull my days would be! You would be away teaching in close,
noisy schoolrooms, from morning till evening, and I should be lingering
at home, unemployed and solitary. I should get depressed and sullen, and
you would soon tire of me.'

"'Frances, you could yet read and study--two things you like so well.'

"'Monsieur, I could not; I like contemplative life, but I like an active
better; I must act in some way, and act with you. I have taken notice,
Monsieur, that people who are only in each other's company for
amusement, never really like each other so well, or esteem each other so
highly, as those who work together, and perhaps suffer together!'"

To which Crimsworth replies, "You speak God's truth, and you shall have
your own way, for it is the best way."

There is far more common sense than passion in the solid little Frances
and her apathetic lover. It is Frances Henri's situation, not her
character, that recalls so irresistibly Lucy Snowe. Frances has neither
Lucy's temperament, nor Lucy's terrible capacity for suffering. She
suffers through her circumstances, not through her temperament. The
motives handled in _The Professor_ belong to the outer rather than the
inner world; the pressure of circumstance, bereavement, poverty, the
influences of alien and unloved surroundings, these are the springs that
determine the drama of Frances and of Crimsworth. Charlotte is
displaying a deliberate int