our gold slipping away?'

She shrank her hand back: she did not wish to withdraw the hand, only to
shun the pledge it signified. He opened an abyss at her feet, and in
deadly alarm of him she exclaimed: 'Oh! not yet; not immediately.' She
trembled, she made her petition dismal by her anguish of speechlessness.
'There will be such . . . not yet! Perhaps later. They must not be
troubled yet--at present. I am . . . I cannot--pray, delay!'

'But you are mine!' said Alvan. 'You feel it as I do. There can be no
real impediment?'

She gave an empty sigh that sought to be a run of entreaties. In fear
of his tongue she caught at words to baffle it, senseless of their
imbecility: 'Do not insist: yes, in time: they will--they--they may.
My father is not very well . . . my mother: she is not very well.
They are neither of them very well: not at present!--Spare them at
present.'

To avoid being carried away, she flung herself from the centaur's back
to the disenchanting earth; she separated herself from him in spirit,
and beheld him as her father and mother and her circle would look on this
pretender to her hand, with his lordly air, his Jew blood, and his
hissing reputation--for it was a reputation that stirred the snakes and
the geese of the world. She saw him in their eyes, quite coldly: which
imaginative capacity was one of the remarkable feats of cowardice, active
and cold of brain even while the heart is active and would be warm.

He read something of her weakness. 'And supposing I decide that it must
be?'