He was compelled to see the fiery core of the raincloud lighting it for a revealment, that allowed as little as it retained of a shadow of obscurity.

The sight was keener than touch and the run of blood with blood to quicken slumbering seeds of passion.

But here is the place of broken ground and tangle, which calls to honourable men, not bent on sport, to be wary to guard the gunlock.  He stopped the word at his mouth.  It was not in him to stop or moderate the force of his eyes.  She met them with the slender unbendingness that was her own; a feminine of inspirited manhood.  There was no soft expression, only the direct shot of light, on both sides; conveying as much as is borne from sun to earth, from earth to sun.  And when such an exchange has come between the two, they are past plighting, they are the wedded one.

Nesta felt it, without asking whether she was loved.  She was his.  She had not a thought of the word of love or the being beloved.  Showers of painful blissfulness went through her, as the tremours of a shocked frame, while she sat quietly, showing scarce a sign; and after he had let her hand go, she had the pressure on it.  The quivering intense of the moment of his eyes and grasp was lord of her, lord of the day and of all days coming.  That is how Love slays Death.  Never did girl so give her soul.

She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to a man untrusted for the character she worshipped.  But she could have given it to Dartrey, despite his love of another, because it was her soul, without any of the cravings, except to bestow.

He perceived, that he had been carried on for the number of steps which are countless miles and do not permit the retreat across the desert behind; and he was in some amazement at himself, remindful of the different nature of our restraining power when we have a couple playing on it.  Yet here was this girl, who called him up to the heights of young life again:  and a brave girl; and she bled for the weak, had no shrinking from the women underfoot:  for the reason, that she was a girl sovereignly pure, angelically tender.  Was there a point of honour to hold him back?

Nataly entered the room.  She kissed Nesta, and sat silent.

‘Mother, will you speak of me to him, if I go out?’ Nesta said.

‘We have spoken,’ her mother replied, vexed by the unmaidenly allusion to that theme.

She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it?—­but that the, Why should I speak of you to him? struck the louder note in her bosom:  and then, What is there that this girl cannot guess!—­filled the mother’s heart with apprehensive dread:  and an inward cry, What things will she not set going, to have them discussed.  And the appalling theme, sitting offensive though draped in their midst, was taken for a proof of the girl’s unblushingness.  After standing as one woman against the world so long, Nataly was relieved to be on the side of a world now