e,--no doubt; but all those
things lose their charm if they are made common. When a man has to
go to Vienna or St Petersburg two or three times a month, you don't
suppose he enjoys travelling?"

"All the same, I should like to live in a pretty country," said
Alice.

"And I want you to come and live in a very ugly country." Then he
paused for a minute or two, not looking at her, but gazing still on
the mountain opposite. She did not speak a word, but looked as he was
looking. She knew that the request was coming, and had been thinking
about it all night; but now that it had come she did not know how to
bear herself. "I don't think," he went on to say, "that you would let
that consideration stand in your way, if on other grounds you were
willing to become my wife."

"What consideration?"

"Because Nethercoats is not so pretty as Lucerne."

"It would have nothing to do with it," said Alice.

"It should have nothing to do with it."

"Nothing; nothing at all," repeated Alice.

"Will you come, then? Will you come and be my wife, and help me to be
happy amidst all that ugliness? Will you come and be my one beautiful
thing, my treasure, my joy, my comfort, my counsellor?"

"You want no counsellor, Mr Grey."

"No man ever wanted one more. Alice, this has been a bad year to me,
and I do not think that it has been a happy one for you."

"Indeed, no."

"Let us forget it,--or rather, let us treat it as though it were
forgotten. Twelve months ago you were mine. You were, at any rate,
so much mine that I had a right to boast of my possession among my
friends."

"It was a poor boast."

"They did not seem to think so. I had but one or two to whom I could
speak of you, but they told me that I was going to be a happy man.
As to myself, I was sure that I was to be so. No man was ever better
contented with his bargain than I was with mine. Let us go back to
it, and the last twelve months shall be as though they had never
been."

"That cannot be, Mr Grey. If it could, I should be worse even than I
am."

"Why cannot it be?"

"Because I cannot forgive myself what I have done, and because you
ought not to forgive me."

"But I do. There has never been an hour with me in which there has
been an offence of yours rankling in my bosom unforgiven. I think you
have been foolish, misguided,--led away by a vain ambition, and that
in the difficulty to which these things brought you, you endeavoured
to constrain yourself to do a