r eyes to her
wild project. But now--just as a field had opened to her cravings
after poetry and art, wider and richer than she had ever imagined--
just as those simple childlike views of man and nature, which she
had learnt to despise, were assuming an awful holiness in her eyes--
just as she had found a human soul to whose regeneration she could
devote all her energies,--to be required to give all up, perhaps for
ever (and she felt that if at all, it ought to be for ever);--it was
too much for her little heart to bear; and she cried bitterly; and
tried to pray, and could not; and longed for a strong and tender
bosom on which to lay her head, and pour out all her doubts and
struggles; and there was none. Her mother did not understand--
hardly loved her. Honoria loved her; but understood her even less
than her mother. Pride--the pride of intellect, the pride of self-
will--had long since sealed her lips to her own family. . . .

And then, out of the darkness of her heart, Lancelot's image rose
before her stronger than all, tenderer than all; and as she
remembered his magical faculty of anticipating all her thoughts,
embodying for her all her vague surmises, he seemed to beckon her
towards him.--She shuddered and turned away. And now she first
became conscious how he had haunted her thoughts in the last few
months, not as a soul to be saved, but as a living man--his face,
his figure, his voice, his every gesture and expression, rising
clear before her, in spite of herself, by day and night.

And then she thought of his last drawing, and the looks which had
accompanied it,--unmistakable looks of passionate and adoring love.
There was no denying it--she had always known that he loved her, but
she had never dared to confess it to herself. But now the
earthquake was come, and all the secrets of her heart burst upward
to the light, and she faced the thought in shame and terror. 'How
unjust I have been to him! how cruel! thus to entice him on in
hopeless love!'

She lifted up her eyes, and saw in the mirror opposite the
reflection of her own exquisite beauty.

'I could have known what I was doing! I knew all the while! And
yet it is so delicious to feel that any one loves me! Is it
selfishness? It is selfishness, to pamper my vanity on an affection
which I do not, will not return. I will not be thus in debt to him,
even for his love. I do not love him--I do not; and even if I di