can wear, when she
is sure that she is right and that the man she loves is wrong. It may
be only about sewing on a button, or about the weather, or it may
concern great issues; but it is always the same when it comes: it
exasperates weak men, and the stronger sort like it, as they more
especially delight in all that is womanly in woman, from heroic virtue
to pathetic weakness.

'Nothing can happen in a month to prevent you from resigning then, as
you could to-day,' Angela said confidently.

The faint smile disappeared, and she grew thoughtful, not for herself,
but for him, and looked at Saint Ursula again. Her hand still lay in
his, on the edge of the mantelpiece, and while she gazed at the
engraving she knew that he was looking at her and was moving nearer;
she felt that he was going to kiss her, but she did not resist this
time though the colour was rising in her throat, and just under the
exquisitely shaped petal of peach-blossom on which his eyes were
fixed, and which was really only the tip of her ear, though it was so
like the leaf of a flower that the scent of the bloom came to his
memory when his lips touched the spot at last.

His hand shut closer over hers at the same moment, and hers fluttered
under his fingers like a small soft bird; but there was no resistance.
He kissed the tip of her ear, and she turned towards him a little; his
kiss pressed her cool cheek, and she moved again; their eyes met, very
near, and dark, and full of light, and then his lips touched hers at
last.

Destiny has many disguises and many moods. Sometimes, as on that day
at the telephone, the unexpected leaps up from its hiding-place and
strikes stunning blows, right and left, like Orestes among the steers
in Tauris, or a maniac let loose among sane men; but sometimes Fate
lurks in her lair, silently poring over the tablets of the future, and
she notes all we say, scrawling 'Folly' against our wisest speeches,
and stamping 'So be it' under the carelessly spoken jest.

She was busy while the young lovers kissed for the first time, by the
mantelpiece; but no inward warning voice had told Angela that she
herself was sealing the order of her life irrevocably when she gave
Giovanni the best advice she could, and he accepted it to please her,
making his instinct obey his judgment for her sake. A man is foolish
who takes an important step without consulting the woman who loves him
most dearly, be she mother, sister, wife, or sweetheart;