e she could give him! And at that thought
she ceased clutching at the bracken stalks, lying as still as the very
stones around her. Could she not? Might she not, even now? And all
feeling, except just a sort of quivering, deserted her--as if she had
fallen into a trance. Why spare this girl? Why falter? She was first!
He had been hers out there. And she still had the power to draw him. At
dinner the first evening she had dragged his gaze to her, away from that
girl--away from youth, as a magnet draws steel. She could still bind him
with chains that for a little while at all events he would not want to
break! Bind him? Hateful word! Take him, hankering after what she could
not give him--youth, white innocence, Spring? It would be infamous,
infamous! She sprang up from the fern, and ran along the hillside, not
looking where she went, stumbling among the tangled growth, in and out
of the boulders, till she once more sank breathless on to a stone. It
was bare of trees just here, and she could see, across the river valley,
the high larch-crowned tor on the far side. The sky was clear--the sun
bright. A hawk was wheeling over that hill; far up, very near the blue!
Infamous! She could not do that! Could not drug him, drag him to her by
his senses, by all that was least high in him, when she wished for
him all the finest things that life could give, as if she had been his
mother. She could not. It would be wicked! In that moment of intense
spiritual agony, those two down there in the sun, by the grey stone and
the dark water, seemed guarded from her, protected. The girl's white
flower-face trembling up, the boy's gaze leaping down! Strange that a
heart which felt that, could hate at the same moment that flower-face,
and burn to kill with kisses that eagerness in the boy's eyes. The
storm in her slowly passed. And she prayed just to feel nothing. It was
natural that she should lose her hour! Natural that her thirst should go
unslaked, and her passion never bloom; natural that youth should go to
youth, this boy to his own kind, by the law of--love. The breeze blowing
down the valley fanned her cheeks, and brought her a faint sensation
of relief. Nobility! Was it just a word? Or did those that gave up
happiness feel noble?

She wandered for a long time in the park. Not till late afternoon did
she again pass out by the gate, through which she had entered, full of
hope. She met no one before she reached her room; and there, to be
sa