wheat, a single fallow threaded by a hare, and cottage gardens, shadowy
garths, wayside flint-heap, woods of the mounds and the dells, fluttering
leaves, clouds: all were swallowed, all were the one unworried
significance. Scenery flew, shifted, returned; again the line of the
downs raced and the hollows reposed simultaneously. They were the same
in change to an eye grown older; they promised, as at the first,
happiness for recklessness. The whole woman was urged to delirious
recklessness in happiness, and she drank the flying scenery as an
indication, a likeness, an encouragement.

When her wild music of the blood had fallen to stillness with the stopped
wheels, she was in the musky, small, low room of the diamond window-
panes, at her companion's disposal for what he might deem the best: he
was her fate. But the more she leaned on a man of self-control, the more
she admired; and an admiration that may not speak itself to the object
present drops inward, stirs the founts; and if these are repressed, the
tenderness which is not allowed to weep will drown self-pity, hardening
the woman to summon scruples in relation to her unworthiness. He might
choose to forget, but the more she admired, the less could her feminine
conscience permit of an utter or of any forgetfulness that she was not
the girl Browny, whom he once loved--perhaps loved now, under some
illusion of his old passion for her--does love now, ill-omened as he is
in that! She read him by her startled reading of her own heart, and she
constrained her will to keep from doing, saying, looking aught that would
burden without gracing his fortunes. For, as she felt, a look, a word, a
touch would do the mischief; she had no resistance behind her cold face,
only the physical scruple, which would become the moral unworthiness if
in any way she induced him to break his guard and blow hers to shreds.
An honourable conscience before the world has not the same certificate in
love's pure realm. They are different kingdoms. A girl may be of both;