ven to the very moment when he began to feel miserable,
and a moment longer, but not more than two; that then he would get up,
and, with a last look, start home for bed.

"I will stop a little while, Tom," she offered, "if you will promise to
go home as soon as I leave you."

Tom promised.

They went wandering along the farm-lanes, and Tom made love to her, as
the phrase is--in his case, alas! a phrase only too correct. I do not
say, or wish understood, that he did not love her--with such love as
lay in the immediate power of his development; but, being a sort of a
poet, such as a man may be who loves the form of beauty, but not the
indwelling power of it, that is, the truth, he _made_ love to
her--fashioned forms of love, and offered them to her; and she accepted
them, and found the words of them very dear and very lovely. For
neither had she got far enough, with all Godfrey's endeavors for her
development, to love aright the ring of the true gold, and therefore
was not able to distinguish the dull sound of the gilt brass Tom
offered her. Poor fellow! it was all he had. But compassion itself can
hardly urge that as a reason for accepting it for genuine. What rubbish
most girls will take for poetry, and with it heap up impassably their
door to the garden of delights! what French polish they will take for
refinement! what merest French gallantry for love! what French
sentiment for passion! what commonest passion they will take for
devotion!--passion that has little to do with their beauty even, still
less with the individuality of it, and nothing at all with their
loveliness!

In justice to Tom, I must add, however, that he also took not a little
rubbish for poetry, much sentiment for pathos, and all passion for
love. He was no intentional deceiver; he was so self-deceived, that,
being himself a deception, he could be nothing but a deceiver--at once
the most complete and the most pardonable, and perhaps the most
dangerous of deceivers.

With all his fine talk of love, to which he now gave full flow, it was
characteristic of him that, although he saw Letty without hat or cloak,
just because he was himself warmly clad, he never thought of her being
cold, until the arm he had thrown round her waist felt her shiver.
Thereupon he was kind, and would have insisted that she should go in
and get a shawl, had she not positively refused to go in and come out
again. Then he would have had her put on his coat, that she might b