write some things called "Georgics," and that Georgics were a kind of
pastoral, and that pastorals always had sheep in them, and shepherds. It
was a good risk, anyhow, and he could see that it was justified by
success. When his conscience reproached him for pretending he knew more
Latin than he did, he told it that he would soon know heaps. If all by
himself, in cold blood, and for no particular reason, he could keep
slogging away at a difficult language evening after evening, what couldn't
he do with Aggie's love as an incentive? Why, he could learn enough Latin
to read Virgil in two months, and to teach Aggie, too. And if any one had
asked him what good that would do either of them, he would have replied,
contemptuously, that some things were ends in themselves.

Still, he longed to prove his quality in some more honorable way. He
called at the Laurels again that evening after supper. And, while Mrs.
Purcell affected to doze, and Susie, as confidante, held Kate and Eliza
well in play, he found another moment. With a solemnity impaired by
extreme nervousness, he asked Miss Purcell if she would accept a copy of
_Browning's Poems_, which he had ventured to order for her from town. He
hadn't brought it with him, because he wished to multiply pretexts for
calling; besides, as he said, he didn't know whether she would really
care--

Aggie cared very much, indeed, and proved it by blushing as she said so.
She had no need now to ask Susie anything. She knew.

And yet, in spite of the Browning and the Virgil, it was surprising how
cool and unexcited she felt in the face of her knowledge, now she had it.
She felt--she wouldn't have owned it--but she felt something remarkably
like indifference. She wondered whether she had seemed indifferent to him
(the thought gave her a pang that she had not experienced when John Hurst
laid his heart out to be trampled on). She wondered whether she _were_
indifferent, really. How could you tell when you really loved a man? She
had looked for great joy and glory and uplifting. And they hadn't come. It
was as if she had held her heart in her hand and looked at it, and,
because she felt no fluttering, had argued that love had never touched it;
for she did not yet know that love's deepest dwelling-place is in the
quiet heart. Aggie had never loved before, and she thought that she was in
the sanctuary on Saturday, when she was only standing on the threshold,
waiting for her hour.

It came, all