regained its hegemony. then. They were called ??snobs?? by the swells themselves; Sam was a very fair example of a snob.

yet respectfully; and for once Mrs
yet respectfully; and for once Mrs.????That would be excellent. a mute party to her guilt. moving westward. I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. no hysteria.Sam first fell for her because she was a summer??s day after the drab dollymops and gays* who had constituted his past sexual experience.????The first thing I admired in him was his courage. to thank you . and its rarity. more learned and altogether more nobly gendered pair down by the sea. in its way. there. but in those brief poised secondsabove the waiting sea.??The doctor quizzed him. Charles opened his mouth to bid them good day; but the faces disappeared with astonishing quickness.????And what has happened to her since? Surely Mrs. ??Now. elephantine but delicate; as full of subtle curves and volumes as a Henry Moore or a Michelangelo; and pure.Yet this time he did not even debate whether he should tell Ernestina; he knew he would not. colleagues.????It is beyond my powers??the powers of far wiser men than myself??to help you here.

accept-ing.??She shook her head vehemently. I do not know. In that inn. am I???Charles laughed. ??Then once again I have to apologize for intruding on your privacy.????She has saved. two excellent Micraster tests. if you wish to change your situation. Fairley.????Your aunt has already extracted every detail of that pleasant evening from me. Of course he had duty to back him up; husbands were expected to do such things.??I did not know you were here. running down to the cliffs.????I was about to return. I believe you. when Charles came out of Mrs. Only the eyes were more intense: eyes without sun. since she was not unaware of Mrs. Below her mobile. Poulteney had been dictating letters.??They stopped.

Charles..??They have gone. Perhaps he had too fixed an idea of what a siren looked like and the circumstances in which she ap-peared??long tresses. ??And she been??t no lady.????Taren??t so awful hard to find.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. by one of those terrible equations that take place at the behest of the superego. I am hardly human any more. oh Charles .. ??I have decided to leave England. and disappeared into the interior shadows. He worked all the way round the rim of his bowler. He had no time for books. She knew. It was not concern for his only daughter that made him send her to boarding school.He smiled. and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love. battledore all the next morning. Sarah had one of those peculiar female faces that vary very much in their attractiveness; in accordance with some subtle chemistry of angle. the despiser of novels.

??I will attend to that.The visitors were ushered in. and this moment.????Ah indeed??if you were only called Lord Brabazon Vava-sour Vere de Vere??how much more I should love you!??But behind her self-mockery lurked a fear. She visited. do I not?????You do. therefore he must do them??just as he must wear heavy flannel and nailed boots to go walking in the country. I do not know. But then she saw him. upon examination. it was another story. a husband. Ernestina had woken in a mood that the brilliant prom-ise of the day only aggravated.??Her head rose then. She walked lightly and surely. under the foliage of the ivy. But at least concede the impossibility of your demand. Nonetheless. ??I know. When he discovered what he had shot. the old branch paths have gone; no car road goes near it. Instead they were a bilious leaden green??one that was.

a paragon of mass. Poulteney. but Ernestina turned to present Charles. that he had drugged me . Ernestina would anxiously search his eyes.??You went to Weymouth?????I deceived Mrs. Thirteen??unfolding of Sarah??s true state of mind) to tell all??or all that matters. but he clung to a spar and was washed ashore. on the opposite side of the street. battledore all the next morning. That life is without under-standing or compassion. find shortcuts. He knew. you are poor by chance.. Some way up the slope. The chalk walls behind this little natural balcony made it into a sun trap. but the painter had drawn on imagination for the other qualities. Sarah??s saving of Millie??and other more discreet interventions??made her popular and respected downstairs; and perhaps Mrs. a traditionally Low Church congregation. . like most men of his time.

if pink complexion. up the general slope of the land and through a vast grove of ivyclad ash trees. Nonetheless. what you will. But it seemed without offense. The family had certainly once owned a manor of sorts in that cold green no-man??s-land between Dartmoor and Exmoor. He most wisely provided the girl with a better education than one would expect. But as one day passed. Poulteney to know you come here. he saw Sam wait-ing. ??Then no doubt it was Sam. He was more like some modern working-class man who thinks a keen knowledge of cars a sign of his social progress. In that inn. The servants were permitted to hold evening prayer in the kitchen.. When he came down to the impatient Mrs. His leg had been crushed at the first impact. I had not eaten that day and he had food prepared. that house above Elm House. and was therefore happy to bring frequent reports to the thwarted mistress. small person who always wore black. How my father had died in a lunatic asylum.

. Poulteney. had exploded the myth. but he caught himself stealing glances at the girl beside him??looking at her as if he saw her for the first time. And I knew his color there was far more natural than the other.??She hesitated. black. Mr. Poulteney. he had become blind: had not seen her for what she was. When the doctor dressed his wound he would clench my hand. But isn??t it a woman???Ernestina peered??her gray. Charles did not put it so crudely to himself; but he was not quite blind to his inconsistency. so also did two faces. without looking at him again. still attest. Personal extinction Charles was aware of??no Victorian could not be. Miss Sarah at Marlborough House. like a tiny alpine meadow. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. like squadrons of reserve moons. but then changed his mind.

There was even a remote relationship with the Drake family. When the doctor dressed his wound he would clench my hand. cosseted. but he clung to a spar and was washed ashore.??I am sure that is your chair. he gave her a brief lecture on melancholia??he was an advanced man for his time and place??and ordered her to allow her sinner more fresh air and freedom. what was what . to find a passage home.. a millennium away from . the less the honor. . as not to discover where you are and follow you there.It had begun. perhaps had never known. who had been on hot coals outside. more like a living me-morial to the drowned. . His leg had been crushed at the first impact.????Indeed I did. as if that was the listener. Us izzen ??lowed to look at a man an?? we??m courtin??.

????But are your two household gods quite free of blame? Who was it preached the happiness of the greatest number?????I do not dispute the maxim. they said. gener-ated by Mrs. bent in a childlike way. where some ship sailed towards Bridport.??I am most grateful. and he tried to remember a line from Homer that would make it a classical moment. for incumbents of not notably fat livings do not argue with rich parishioners. But the far clouds reminded him of his own dissatisfaction; of how he would have liked to be sailing once again through the Tyrrhenian; or riding. ma??m. And slowly Charles realized that he was in temperament nearer to his grandfather than to either of his grandfather??s sons. but even they had vexed her at first.Finally. She is asleep. he wondered whether it was not a vanity that made her so often carry her bonnet in her hand. But he had no luck. Por-tions of the Cobb are paved with fossil-bearing stone. but in ??Charles??s time private minds did not admit the desires banned by the public mind; and when the consciousness was sprung on by these lurking tigers it was ludicrously unprepared. Now Mrs. glanced desperately round. He found a pretty fragment of fossil scallop. He associated such faces with foreign women??to be frank (much franker than he would have been to himself) with foreign beds.

to be near her father. sir. already suspected but not faced. or he held her arm. Christian... in short. For that reason she may be frequently seen haunting the sea approaches to our town. After all. a little mad. She had infi-nitely the most life. rather than emotional. She moderated her tone. ancestry??with one ear. yet a mutinous guilt. my dear Mrs. how wonderful it was to be thoroughly modern young people.????Is that what made you laugh?????Yes. whatever sins I have committed. ma??m.?? a prostitute??it is the significance in Leech??s famous cartoon of 1857.

You must not think I speak of mere envy.????You have come. Again she glanced up at Charles. and therefore am sad.. Ernestina??s grandfather may have been no more than a well-to-do draper in Stoke Newington when he was young; but he died a very rich draper??much more than that. ??It seems to me that Mr. in short. He knew he was overfastidious. ??His name was Varguennes. Poulteney; to be frank. She walked lightly and surely. rather deep. since she founds a hospital.??This abruptly secular descent did not surprise the vicar. a committee of ladies. I am not yet mad.????Mrs. You were not born a woman with a natural respect. The visits were unimportant: but the delicious uses to which they could be put when once received! ??Dear Mrs. Fairley reads so poorly.You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work.

Mrs. He said it to himself: It is the stupidest thing. ??I think that was not necessary. yellowing.????In whose quarries I shall condemn you to work in perpe-tuity??if you don??t get to your feet at once. He saw that she was offended; again he had that unaccountable sensation of being lanced. as the guidebooks say. trembling. then with the greatest pleasure. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s ??gooseberry?? meant ??all that is dreary and old-fashioned??; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square . when the light in the room was dark. and which seemed to deny all that gentleness of gesture and discreetness of permitted caress that so attracted her in Charles.But this is preposterous? A character is either ??real?? or ??imaginary??? If you think that. Tussocks of grass provided foothold; and she picked her way carefully. and riddled twice a day; and since the smooth domestic running of the house depended on it. it was suddenly. she would turn and fling herself out of his sight.??Now what is wrong???????Er.. Mrs. Perhaps I heard what he did not mean. In short.

??There was a silence then. she might even have closed the door quietly enough not to wake the sleepers. Fursey-Harris to call. He was well aware. And she died on the day that Hitler invaded Poland. for which light duty he might take the day as his reward (not all Victorian employers were directly responsible for communism). was out. The skin below seemed very brown. ??But a most distressing case. a constant smile. Though he conceded enough to sport to shoot partridge and pheasant when called upon to do so.??E. just con-ceivably. he spent a great deal of time traveling. We know she was alive a fortnight after this incident. and Mary she saw every day. When the doctor dressed his wound he would clench my hand. Ahead moved the black and now bonneted figure of the girl; she walked not quickly. But she would not speak. Needless to say.????And just now when I seemed . Charles determined.

poor girl; and had it not been for Sarah. her mauve-and-black pelisse. Naples..?? The vicar was conscious that he was making a poor start for the absent defendant. On the contrary??I swore to him that. still laugh-ing. a little posy of crocuses.His uncle often took him to task on the matter; but as Charles was quick to point out. one perhaps described by the mind to itself in semiliterary terms. waiting for the concert to begin. of course. He was detected.?? And then he turned and walked away. then with the greatest pleasure.??Unlike the vicar. with Ernestina across a gay lunch.??No one is beyond help .Dr. The invisible chains dropped.. .

She should have known better. but endlessly long in process . That a man might be so indifferent to religion that he would have gone to a mosque or a synagogue. Insipid her verse is. as if body disapproved of face and turned its back on such shamelessness; because her look. ??I think that was not necessary. Poachers slunk in less guiltily than elsewhere after the pheasants and rabbits; one day it was discovered. and to Tina??s sotto voce wickednesses with the other.I cannot imagine what Bosch-like picture of Ware Com-mons Mrs. It had not. Poulteney. as if what he had said had confirmed some deep knowledge in her heart.??She stared down at the ground.????Such kindness?????Such kindness is crueler to me than????She did not finish the sentence. Talbot did not take her back?????Madam. and pretend to be dignified??but he could not help looking back. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith.. . so that he could see the side of her face. and be one in real earnest. people of some taste.

diminishing cliffs that dropped into the endless yellow saber of the Chesil Bank. no.At least he began in the spirit of such an examination; as if it was his duty to do so. to his own amazement. But Sarah was as sensitive as a sea anemone on the matter; however obliquely Mrs. unstoppable. out of the copper jug he had brought with him. and just as Charles came out of the woodlands he saw a man hoying a herd of cows away from a low byre beside the cottage.. I find this incomprehensible. It was not only that she ceased abruptly to be the tacit favorite of the household when the young lady from London arrived; but the young lady from London came also with trunkfuls of the latest London and Paris fashions.Sarah was intelligent. and dropped it. Charles. I did what I could for the girl. she went on. In one of the great ash trees below a hidden missel thrush was singing.Incomprehensible? But some vices were then so unnatural that they did not exist. the deficiencies of the local tradesmen and thence naturally back to servants. Poulteney??s presence that was not directly connected with her duties. the lack of reason for such sorrow; as if the spring was natural in itself. so I must be.

She was charming when she blushed. so that he could see the profile of that face. Many who fought for the first Reform Bills of the 1830s fought against those of three decades later. but on foot this seemingly unimportant wilderness gains a strange extension. His destination had indeed been this path. and his duty towards Ernestina began to outweigh his lust for echinoderms. already been fore-stalled. But you must remember that she is not alady born. She made sure other attractive young men were always present; and did not single the real prey out for any special favors or attention. It was an end to chains.?? She began to defoliate the milkwort. neat civilization behind his back.????There is no reason why you should give me anything. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen.Ah. Poulteney to grasp the implied compliment. tinker with it . raises the book again. They bubbled as the best champagne bubbles. What was unnatural was his now quite distinct sense of guilt. Its device was the only device: What is. free as a god.

Strange as it may seem. the small but ancient eponym of the inbite. while she was ill. and then again from five to ten.?? he added for Mrs.He stood unable to do anything but stare down. He very soon decided that Ernestina had neither the sex nor the experience to under-stand the altruism of his motives; and thus very conveniently sidestepped that other less attractive aspect of duty. mummifying clothes. ??And she been??t no lady. Poulteney stood suddenly in the door. so quickly that his step back was in vain. But he ended by bowing and smiling urbanely. in terms of our own time.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias. Woman.????It is beyond my powers??the powers of far wiser men than myself??to help you here.?? Something new had crept into her voice. the countryside around Lyme abounds in walks; and few of them do not give a view of the sea. touching tale of pain. Fortunately for her such a pair of eyes existed; even better. One was her social inferior. that my happiness depended on it as well.

I??ll spread sail of silver and I??ll steer towards the sun. one of those charming heads of the young Victoria that still occasionally turn up in one??s change.??It was higgerance. after his fashion. She could have??or could have if she had ever been allowed to??danced all night; and played. I would have come there to ask for you. the nearest acknowledgment to an apology she had ever been known to muster. Her humor did not exactly irritate him. How for many years I had felt myself in some mysterious way condemned??and I knew not why??to solitude. They served as a substitute for experience. He did not know how long she had been there; but he remembered that sound of two minutes before. am I???Charles laughed. that you??ve been fast.A few seconds later he was himself on the cart track back to Lyme. the less the honor. hastily put the book away. who inspires sympathy in others. so that he could see the side of her face. Poulteney. Sam felt he was talking too much. of falling short.The doctor smiled.

I gave the two most obvious reasons why Sarah Woodruff presented herself for Mrs. In summer it is the nearest this country can offer to a tropical jungle. Four years ago my father was declared bankrupt.?? But Sam had had enough.????Mr. has pronounced: ??The poem is a pure. however.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias. for various ammonites and Isocrina he coveted for the cabinets that walled his study in London.??Her eyes were suddenly on his. took the same course; but only one or two. But he spoke quickly. Charles surveyed this skeleton at the feast with a suitable deference. Poulteney seemed not to think so. And there. I know this is madness. As he talked.?? Then. but he clung to a spar and was washed ashore. Mrs.??By jove. And what I say is sound Christian doctrine.

she did turn and go on. person returns; what then???But again Sarah did the best possible thing: she said nothing. Talbot?? were not your suspicions aroused by that? It is hardly the conduct of a man with honorable intentions. P. through that thought??s fearful shock.??I have no one to turn to. May we go there???He indicated willingness. as mere stupidity. When he returned to London he fingered and skimmed his way through a dozen religious theories of the time. Her mind did not allow itself to run to a Parisian grisette or an almond-eyed inn-girl at Cintra. Poulteney??s face. After some days he returned to France.??It cannot concern Miss Woodruff?????Would that it did not. Thus she appeared inescapably doomed to the one fate nature had so clearly spent many millions of years in evolving her to avoid: spinsterhood. A farmer merely.??Have you read this fellow Darwin???Grogan??s only reply was a sharp look over his spectacles. ??Right across the street she calls. or at least realized the sex of. Sarah appeared in the private drawing room for the evening Bible-reading. finally escorted the ladies back to their house. However. The day drew to a chilly close.

Progress. That is all.??You must allow me to pay for these tests what I should pay at Miss Arming??s shop. She was afraid of the dark. but of not seeing that it had taken place. Tranter??s. and by my own hand. an element of pleasure; but now he detected a clear element of duty. Unfortunately there was now a duenna present??Mrs. bounds.????How could you??when you know Papa??s views!????I was most respectful. a kind of Mayfair equivalent of Mrs. Poulteney. The ill was familiar; but it was out of the question that she should inflict its conse-quences upon Charles. moving westward. But alas.She took her hand away. ma??m. as the guidebooks say.??Science eventually regained its hegemony. then. They were called ??snobs?? by the swells themselves; Sam was a very fair example of a snob.