To one who had read Darwin, and had chanced to see them as they
walked in their steady, stately young life among the ancient cedars
and clipped yews of the garden, with the rags and tatters of the
ruined summer hanging over and around them, they must have looked as
fine an instance of natural selection as the world had to show. And
now in truth for the first time, with any shadow of purpose, that
is, did the thought of Helen as a wife occur to Bascombe. She
listened so well, was so ready to take what he presented to her, was
evidently so willing to become a pupil, that he began to say to
himself that here was the very woman made--no, not made, that
implied a maker--but for him, without the MADE; that is, if ever he
should bring himself by marriage to limit the freedom to which man,
the crown of the world, the blossom of nature, the cauliflower of
the spine, was predestined or doomed, without will in himself or
beyond himself, from an eternity of unthinking matter, ever
producing what was better than itself in the prolific darkness of
non-intent.






CHAPTER IX.

THE PARK.