le schemes. Life, he felt, could never be the
same for him again; he was in the grip of a power that made light of
human arrangements. The old books were full of it; they had spoken of
some hectic mystery, that seized upon warriors and sages alike, wasted
their strength, broke their energies, led them into crime and sorrow.
He had always rather despised the pale and hollow-eyed lovers of the
old songs, and thought of them as he might think of men indulging in a
baneful drug which filched away all manful prowess and vigour. It was
like La Belle Dame sans merci after all, the slender faring child,
whose kiss in the dim grotto had left the warrior 'alone and palely
loitering,' burdened with sad thoughts in the wintry land. And yet he
could not withstand it. He could see the reasonable and sensible
course, a placid friendship, a long life full of small duties and quiet
labours;--and then the thought of Maud would come across him, with her
shining hair, her clear eyes, holding a book, as he had seen her last
in the Vicarage, in her delicate hands, and looking out into the garden
with that troubled inscrutable look; and all the prudent considerations
fell and tumbled together like a house of cards, and he felt as though
he must go straight to her and fall before her, and ask her to give him
a gift the very nature of which he did not know, her girlish self, her
lightly-ranging mind, her tiny cares and anxieties, her virginal
heart--for what purpose? he did not know; just to be with her, to clasp
her close, to hear her voice, to look into her eyes, to discourse with
her some hidden secret of love. A faint sense of some infinite beauty
and nearness came over him which, if he could win it, would put the
whole of life into a different plane. Not a friendly combination, but
an absolute openness and nakedness of soul, nothing hidden, nothing
kept back, everything confessed and admitted, a passing of two streams
of life into one.

XVIII

THE PICNIC

Jack arrived at Windlow in due course, and brought with him Guthrie to
stay. Howard thought, and was ashamed of thinking, that Jack had some
scheme on foot; and the arrival of Guthrie was embarrassing to him, as
likely to complicate an already too complicated situation.

A plan was made for a luncheon picnic on the hill. There was a tower on
the highest eminence of the down, some five miles away, a folly built
by some wealthy squire among woodlands, and commanding wide views;