'O, it is quite trifling. Does not getting up in a hurry cause a sense
of faintness sometimes?'

'Yes, in people who are not strong.'

'If we don't talk about being faint it will go off. Faintness is such a
queer thing that to think of it is to have it. Let us talk as we were
talking before--about your young man and other indifferent matters, so as
to divert my thoughts from fainting, dear Berta. I have always thought
the book was to be forwarded to that gentleman because he was a
connection of yours by marriage, and he had asked for it. And so you
have met this--this Mr. Julian, and gone for walks with him in evenings,
I suppose, just as young men and women do who are courting?'

'No, indeed--what an absurd child you are!' said Ethelberta. 'I knew him
once, and he is interesting; a few little things like that make it all
up.'

'The love is all on one side, as with me.'

'O no, no: there is nothing like that. I am not attached to any one,
strictly speaking--though, more strictly speaking, I am not unattached.'

''Tis a delightful middle mind to be in. I know it, for I was like it
once; but I had scarcely been so long enough to know where I was before I
was gone past.'

'You should have commanded yourself, or drawn back entirely; for let me
tell you that at the beginning of caring for a man--just when you are
suspended between thinking and feeling--there is a hair's-breadth of time