nd
eyes, as white from head to foot as a double narcissus flower in the
dusk, bending towards some faint tune played to it somewhere oft in the
fields. But all those little sounds ceased, one after another--they
had meant nothing; and each time, her spirit returning--within the pale
walls of the room, began once more to inhabit her lingering fingers.
During that hour in her bedroom she lived through years. It was dark
when she left it.

CHAPTER XVI

When Miltoun at last came it was past nine o'clock.

Silent, but quivering all over; she clung to him in the hall; and this
passion of emotion, without sound to give it substance, affected him
profoundly. How terribly sensitive and tender she was! She seemed to
have no armour. But though so stirred by her emotion, he was none the
less exasperated. She incarnated at that moment the life to which he
must now resign himself--a life of unending tenderness, consideration,
and passivity.

For a long time he could not bring himself to speak of his decision.
Every look of her eyes, every movement of her body, seemed pleading with
him to keep silence. But in Miltoun's character there was an element
of rigidity, which never suffered him to diverge from an objective once
determined.

When he had finished telling her, she only said:

"Why can't we go on in secret?"

And he felt with a sort of horror that he must begin his struggle over
again. He got up, and threw open the window. The sky was dark above the
river; the wind had risen. That restless murmuration, and the width of
the night with its scattered stars, seemed to come rushing at his face.
He withdrew from it, and leaning on the sill looked down at her. What
flower-like delicacy she had! There flashed across him the memory of a
drooping blossom, which, in the Spring, he had seen her throw into the
flames; with the words: "I can't bear flowers to fade, I always want to
burn them." He could see again those waxen petals yield to the fierce
clutch of the little red creeping sparks, and the slender stalk
quivering, and glowing, and writhing to blackness like a live thing.
And, distraught, he began:

"I can't live a lie. What right have I to lead, if I can't follow? I'm
not like our friend Courtier who believes in Liberty. I never have, I
never shall. Liberty? What is Liberty? But only those who conform
to authority have the right to wield authority. A man is a churl who
enforces laws, when he himself has not the stren