down on a
sheet of perfect notepaper and locked it up in a drawer. Alicia did
not speculate about it, and the whole soul of it was tangled now in a
speculation. There had been a time filled with the knowledge and the joy
of this new depth in her like a buoyant sea, and she had been content
to float in it, imagining desirable things. Stanhope's waiting contract
made a limit to the time--a limit she brought up against without
distress or shock, but with a kind of recognising thrill in contact
at last with the necessity for action, decision, a climax of high
heart-beats. She saw with surprise that she had lived with her passion
these weeks and months half consciously expecting that a crucial moment
would dissolve it, like a person aware that he dreams and will presently
awake. She had not faced till now any exigency of her case. But the
crucial moment had leapt upon her, pointing out the subjection of her
life, and she, undefended, sought only how to accomplish her bonds.

Certainly she saw no solution that did not seem monstrous; yet every
pulse in her demanded a solution; there was no questioning the imperious
need. She had the fullest, clearest view of the situation, and she
looked at it without flinching and without compromise. Above all she had
true vision of Stephen Arnold, glorifying nowhere, extenuating nothing.
It was almost cruel to be the victim of such circumstance, and be denied
the soft uses of illusion; but if that note of sympathy had been offered
to Hilda she would doubtless have retorted that it was precisely
because she saw him that she loved him. His figure, in its poverty and
austerity, was always with her; she made with the fabric of her nature
a kind of shrine for it, enclosing, encompassing; and her possession
of him, by her knowledge, was deep and warm and protecting. I think the
very fulness of it brought her a kind of content with which, but
for Llewellyn and his contract, she would have been willing to go on
indefinitely. It made him hers in a primary and essential way, beside
which any mere acknowledgment or vow seemed chiefly decorative, like the
capital of a pillar firmly rooted. There may be an appearance that she
took a good deal for granted; if there is, I fear that in the baldness
of this history it has not been evident how much and how variously
Arnold depended on her, in how many places her colour and her vitality
patched out the monkish garment of his soul. This with her enthusiasm
an