hhold and
restrain. All these possibilities had fled. They looked at each other,
almost antagonists, because of being so much the reverse. She drew back,
holding herself apart, unwilling to accept that necessity of decision;
not knowing how to escape from it; holding her hands clasped together
that he might not secure them; her heart fluttering in her throat; her
head throbbing with pain and excitement. Ah, if she had been that girl!
If he had sought one like himself! He felt it too, even in the scorn
with which he repulsed the suggestion; and for a moment it hung on the
balance of a thought, on the turn of a look, whether his patience might
not give way; whether his fastidious temper might not take fire at the
aspect of that reluctance with which she held away from him, kept back,
would not yield. But, on the other hand, that very reluctance, was it
not a subtle attraction, a charm the more; giving a sweetness beyond all
speaking to the certainty that, underneath all that resistance, the real
citadel was won? After this momentary armistice and pause, in which they
both seemed to regain their hurried breath, and the mist of the combat
dispelled a little, he threw himself down by her again, and got both the
clasped hands into his own, saying with something between supplication
and authority, "I am to stay?"

"I cannot bid you go," she said, trembling, almost inaudible; and in
this way the long battle came to an end in a moment. They looked at each
other, scarcely believing it; asking each other, could it be so? Even he
scarcely ventured to presume that it was so, though he had forced it and
taken the decision into his own hands.

There ensued a half hour or so of bewildered happiness, in which it
seemed, to him at least, that the world had turned into a different
sphere, and to her that there was in life a sweetness which had come
to her too late, of which she could never taste the true flavour, nor
forget the bitterness behind; yet which was sweet and wonderful; too
wonderful, almost, to believe. She delivered herself over to listen, to
behold the flood of the young man's rapture. It filled her with a kind
of admiration and almost terror. She was like his mother, though with a
difference. She had not known what love was. It was wonderful to her to
see it, to know that she was the object of it; but as the warm tide
touched her, invaded her being, carrying her away, there was something
of fear mingled with her yielding t