woman such as I mean. I know one, and she's enough. By the time you had
seen ten ghosts you would have got used to them, and found there was no
danger from them; but a woman without a soul will devour any number of
men. You see she's all room inside! Look here! I must be open with you:
tell me you are not in love with my cousin Lufa, and I will bid you
good-night"

"I am so much in love with her, that I dare not think what may come of
it," replied Walter.

"Then for God's sake tell her, and have done with it! Anything will be
better than going on like this. I will not say what Lufa is; indeed I
don't know what name would at all fit her! You think me a queer, dry,
odd sort of a customer: I was different when I fell in love with Lufa.
She is older than you think her, though not so old as I am. I kept
saying to myself she was hardly a woman yet; I must give her time. I was
better brought up than she; I thought things of consequence that she
thought of none. I hadn't a stupid ordinary mother like hers. She's my
second cousin. She took my love-making, never drew me on, never pushed
me back; never refused my love, never returned it. Whatever I did or
said, she seemed content. She was always writing poetry. 'But where's
her own poetry?' I would say to myself. I was always trying to get
nearer to what I admired; she never seemed to suspect the least relation
between the ideal and life, between thought and action. To have an ideal
implied no aspiration after it! She has not a thought of the smallest
obligation to carry out one of the fine things she writes of, any more
than people that go to church think they have anything to do with what
they hear there. Most people's nature seems all in pieces. They wear and
change their moods as they wear and change their dresses. Their moods
make them, and not they their moods. They are different with every