Graham did not refuse. He went to Enghien for four days and a quarter.
He was under the same roof as Isaura. Oh, those happy days! so happy
that they defy description. But though to Graham the happiest days he
had ever known, they were happier still to Isaura. There were drawbacks
to his happiness, none to hers,--drawbacks partly from reasons the weight
of which the reader will estimate later; partly from reasons the reader
may at once comprehend and assess. In the sunshine of her joy, all the
vivid colourings of Isaura's artistic temperament came forth, so that
what I may call the homely, domestic woman-side of her nature faded into
shadow. If, my dear reader, whether you be man or woman, you have come
into familiar contact with some creature of a genius to which, even
assuming that you yourself have a genius in its own way, you have no
special affinities, have you not felt shy with that creature? Have you
not, perhaps, felt how intensely you could love that creature, and
doubted if that creature could possibly love you? Now I think that
shyness and that disbelief are common with either man or woman, if,
however conscious of superiority in the prose of life, he or she
recognizes inferiority in the poetry of it. And yet this self-abasement
is exceedingly mistaken. The poetical kind of genius is so grandly
indulgent, so inherently deferential, bows with such unaffected modesty
to the superiority in which it fears it may fail (yet seldom does fail),
--the superiority of common-sense. And when we come to women, what
marvellous truth is conveyed by the woman who has had no superior in
intellectual gifts among her own sex! Corinne, crowned at the Capitol,
selects out of the whole world as the hero of her love no rival poet and
enthusiast, but a cold-blooded, sensible Englishman.

Graham Vane, in his strong masculine form of intellect--Graham Vane, from
whom I hope much, if he live to fulfil his rightful career--had, not