now," said Troy, softly. "And I'll venture to take
and keep this in remembrance of you."

She saw him stoop to the grass, pick up the winding lock which he
had severed from her manifold tresses, twist it round his fingers,
unfasten a button in the breast of his coat, and carefully put
it inside. She felt powerless to withstand or deny him. He was
altogether too much for her, and Bathsheba seemed as one who, facing
a reviving wind, finds it blow so strongly that it stops the breath.
He drew near and said, "I must be leaving you."

He drew nearer still. A minute later and she saw his scarlet form
disappear amid the ferny thicket, almost in a flash, like a brand
swiftly waved.

That minute's interval had brought the blood beating into her face,
set her stinging as if aflame to the very hollows of her feet, and
enlarged emotion to a compass which quite swamped thought. It had
brought upon her a stroke resulting, as did that of Moses in Horeb,
in a liquid stream--here a stream of tears. She felt like one who
has sinned a great sin.

The circumstance had been the gentle dip of Troy's mouth downwards
upon her own. He had kissed her.

CHAPTER XXIX

PARTICULARS OF A TWILIGHT WALK

We now see the element of folly distinctly mingling with the many
varying particulars which made up the character of Bathsheba
Everdene. It was almost foreign to her intrinsic nature. Introduced
as lymph on the dart of Eros, it eventually permeated and coloured
her whole constitution. Bathsheba, though she had too much
understanding to be entirely governed by her womanliness, had too
much womanliness to use her understanding to the best advantage.
Perhaps in no minor point does woman astonish her helpmate more than
in the strange power she possesses of believing cajoleries that she
knows to be false--except, indeed, in that of being utterly sceptical
on strictures that she knows to be true.

Bathsheba loved Troy in the way that only self-reliant women
love when they abandon their self-reliance. When a strong woman
recklessly throws away her strength she is worse than a weak woman
who has never had any strength to throw away. One source of her
inadequacy is the novelty of the occasion. She has never had practice
in making the best of such a condition. Weakness is doubly weak by
being new.

Bathsheba was not conscious of guile in this matter. Though in one
sense a woman of the world, it was, after all, that world of d