his ardour:  There is a power in their troubled beauty women learn the use of, and what wonder?  They have seen it kindle Ilium to flames so often!  But ere they grow matronly in the house of Menelaus, they weep, and implore, and do not, in truth, know how terribly two-edged is their gift of loveliness.  They resign themselves to an incomprehensible frenzy; pleasant to them, because they attribute it to excessive love.  And so the very sensible things which they can and do say, are vain.

I reckon it absurd to ask them to be quite in earnest.  Are not those their own horses in yonder team?  Certainly, if they were quite in earnest, they might soon have my gentleman as sober as a carter.  A hundred different ways of disenchanting him exist, and Adrian will point you out one or two that shall be instantly efficacious.  For Love, the charioteer, is easily tripped, while honest jog-trot Love keeps his legs to the end.  Granted dear women are not quite in earnest, still the mere words they utter should be put to their good account.  They do mean them, though their hearts are set the wrong way.  ’Tis a despairing, pathetic homage to the judgment of the majority, in whose faces they are flying.  Punish Helen, very young, lightly.  After a certain age you may select her for special chastisement.  An innocent with Theseus, with Paris she is an advanced incendiary.

The fair young girl was sitting as her lover had left her; trying to recall her stunned senses.  Her bonnet was un-removed, her hands clasped on her knees; dry tears in her eyes.  Like a dutiful slave, she rose to him.  And first he claimed her mouth.  There was a speech, made up of all the pretty wisdom her wild situation and true love could gather, awaiting him there; but his kiss scattered it to fragments.  She dropped to her seat weeping, and hiding her shamed cheeks.

By his silence she divined his thoughts, and took his hand and drew it to her lips.

He bent beside her, bidding her look at him.

“Keep your eyes so.”

She could not.

“Do you fear me, Lucy?”

A throbbing pressure answered him.

“Do you love me, darling?”

She trembled from head to foot.

“Then why do you turn from me?”

She wept:  “O Richard, take me home! take me home!”

“Look at me, Lucy!”

Her head shrank timidly round.

“Keep your eyes on me, darling!  Now speak!”

But she could not look and speak too.  The lover knew his mastery when he had her eyes.

“You wish me to take you home?”

She faltered:  “O Richard? it is not too late.”

“You regret what you have done for me?”

“Dearest! it is ruin.”

“You weep because you have consented to be mine?”

“Not for me!  O Richard!”

“For me you weep?  Look at me!  For me?”

“How will it end!  O Richard!”