But if he were her lover, if she were going to be his wife, he would have the right to offer her every facility and encouragement to enter the Catholic Church—­the true faith.  Darkness passes, and the birds are carolling the sun, flowers and trees are pranked with aerial jewellery, the fragrance of the warm earth flows in your veins, your eyes are fain of the light above and your heart of the light within.  He would not jar his happiness by the presence of Mrs Norton, even Kitty’s presence was too actual a joy to be home.  She drew him out of himself too completely, interrupted the exquisite sense of personal enchantment which seemed to permeate and flow through him with the sweetness of health returning to a convalescent on a spring day.  He closed his eyes, and his thoughts came and went like soft light and shade in a garden close; his happiness was a part of himself, as fragrance is inherent in the summer time.  The evil of the last days had fallen from him, and the reaction was equivalently violent.  Nor was he conscious of the formal resignation he was now making of his dream, nor did he think of the distasteful load of marital duties with which he was going to burden himself; all was lost in the vision of beautiful companionship, a sort of heavenly journeying, a bright earthly way with flowers and starlight—­he a little in advance pointing, she following, with her eyes lifted to the celestial gates shining in the distance.  Sometimes his arms would be thrown about her.  Sometimes he would press a kiss upon her face.  She was his, his, and he was her saviour.  The evening died, the room darkened, and John’s dream continued in the twilight, and the ringing of the dinner bell and the disturbance of dressing did not destroy his thoughts.  Like fumes of wine they hung about him during the evening, and from time to time he looked at Kitty.

But although he had so far surrendered himself, he did not escape without another revulsion of feeling.  A sudden realisation of what his life would be under the new conditions did not fail to frighten him, and he looked back with passionate regret on his abandoned dreams.  But his nature was changed, abstention he knew was beyond his strength, and after many struggles, each of which was feebler than the last, he determined to propose to Kitty on the first suitable occasion.

Then came the fear of refusal.  Often he was paralysed with pain, sometimes he would morbidly allow his thoughts to dwell on the moment when he would hear her say, it was impossible, that she did not and could not love him.  The young grey light of the eyes would be fixed upon him; she would speak her sorrow, and her thin hands would hang by her side in the simple attitude that was so peculiar to her.  And he mused willingly on the long meek life of grief that would then await him.  He would belong to God; his friar’s frock would hide all; it would be the habitation, and the Gothic walls he would raise, the sepulchre of his love....