She had latterly been thinking of Alvan's rejection of the part of
centaur; and his phrase, the quadruped man, breathed meaning. He was to
gain her lawfully after dominating her utterly. That was right, but it
levelled imagination. There is in the sentimental kingdom of Love a form
of reasoning, by which a lady of romantic notions who is dominated
utterly, will ask herself why she should be gained lawfully: and she is
moved to do so by the consideration that if the latter, no necessity can
exist for the former: and the reverse. In the union of the two
conditions she sees herself slavishly domesticated. With her Indian
Bacchus imagination rose, for he was pliant: she had only to fancy, and
he was beside her.--Quick to the saddle, away! The forest of terrors is
ahead; they are at the verge of it; a last hamlet perches on its borders;
the dwellers have haunted faces; the timbers of their huts lean to an
upright in wry splinters; warnings are moaned by men and women with the
voice of a night-wind; but on and on! the forest cannot be worse than a
world defied. They drain a cup of milk apiece and they spur, for this is
the way to the golden Indian land of the planted vine and the lover's
godship.--Ludicrous! There is no getting farther than the cup of milk
with Marko. They curvet and caper to be forward unavailingly. It should
be Alvan to bring her through the forest to the planted vine in sunland.
Her splendid prose Alvan could do what the sprig of poetry can but
suggest. Never would malicious fairy in old woman's form have offered
Alvan a cup of milk to paralyze his bride's imagination of him
confronting perils. Yet, O shameful contrariety of the fates! he who
could, will not; he who would, is incapable. Let it not be supposed that
the desire of her bosom was to be run away with in person. Her simple
human nature wished for the hero to lift her insensibly over the
difficult opening chapter of the romance--through 'the forest,' or half
imagined: that done, she felt bold enough to meet the unimagined, which,
as there was no picture of it to terrify her, seemed an easy gallop into