whole performance that specially appealed to my artistic sense.
That it should have been Selina, too, who should break out
this way--Selina, who had just become a regular subscriber to the
"Young Ladies' Journal," and who allowed herself to be taken out
to strange teas with an air of resignation palpably assumed--this
was a special joy, and served to remind me that much of this
dreaded convention that was creeping over us might be, after all,
only veneer. Edward also was absent, getting licked into shape
at school; but to him the loss was nothing. With his stern
practical bent he wouldn't have seen any sense in it--to recall
one of his favourite expressions. To Harold, however, for
whom the gods had always cherished a special tenderness, it was
granted, not only to witness, but also, priestlike, to feed the
sacred fire itself. And if at the time he paid the penalty
exacted by the sordid unimaginative ones who temporarily rule the
roast, he must ever after, one feels sure, have carried
inside him some of the white gladness of the acolyte who, greatly
privileged, has been permitted to swing a censer at the sacring
of the very Mass.

October was mellowing fast, and with it the year itself; full of
tender hints, in woodland and hedgerow, of a course well-nigh
completed. From all sides that still afternoon you caught the
quick breathing and sob of the runner nearing the goal.
Preoccupied and possessed, Selina had strayed down the garden and
out into the pasture beyond, where, on a bit of rising ground
that dominated the garden on one side and the downs with the old
coach-road on the other, she had cast herself down to chew the
cud of fancy. There she was presently joined by Harold,
breathless and very full of his latest grievance.