effect of a purpose strongly conceived. Or should it be just the
opposite, and have I only given you a proof that I snatch at rewards
before doing the least thing to merit them?'

Something in these last sentences jarred upon her, and gave her
courage to speak a thought which had often come to her in connection
with Egremont.

'I think that a woman does not reason in that way if her deepest
feelings are pledged. If I were able to go with you and share your
life I shouldn't think I was rewarding you, but that you were
offering me a great happiness. It is my loss that I can only watch
you from a distance.'

The words moved him. It was not with conscious insincerity that he
spoke of his love and his intellectual aims as interdependent, yet
he knew that Annabel revealed the truer mind.

'And my desire is for the happiness of your love!' he exclaimed.
'Forget that pedantry--always my fault. I cannot feel sure that my
other motives will keep their force, but I know that this desire
will be only stronger in me as time goes on.'

Yet when she kept silence the habit of his thought again uttered
itself.

'I shall pursue this work that I have undertaken, because, loving
you, I dare not fall below the highest life of which I am capable. I
know that you can see into my nature with those clear eyes of yours.
I could not love you if I did not feel that you were far above me. I