-day world: no
moment in the distance when duty would take off her iron glove and breastplate,
and clasp him gently into rest. He conceived no picture of the future but one
made up of hard-working days such as he lived through, with growing contentment
and intensity of interest, every fresh week: love, he thought, could never be
anything to him, but a living memory - a limb lopped off, but not gone from
consciousness. He did not know that the power of loving was all the while
gaining new force within him; that the new sensibilities bought by a deep
experience were so many new fibres by which it was possible, nay, necessary to
him, that his nature should intertwine with another. Yet he was aware that
common affection and friendship were more precious to him than they used to be,
- that he clung more to his mother and Seth, and had an unspeakable satisfaction
in the sight or imagination of any small addition to their happiness. The
Poysers, too - hardly three or four days passed but he felt the need of seeing
them, and interchanging words and looks of friendliness with them: he would have
felt this, probably, even if Dinah had not been with them; but he had only said
the simplest truth in telling Dinah that he put her above all other friends in
the world. Could anything be more natural? For in the darkest moments of memory
the thought of her always came as the first ray of returning comfort: the early
days of gloom at the Hall Farm had been gradually turned into soft moonlight by
her presence; and in the cottage, too, - for she had come at every spare moment
to soothe and cheer poor Lisbeth, who had been stricken with a fear that subdued
even her querulousness, at the sight of her darling Adam's grief-worn face. He
had become used to watching her light quiet movements, her pretty loving ways to
the children, when he went to the Hall Farm; to listen for her voice as for a
recurrent music; to think everything she said and did was just right, and could
not have been better. In spite of his wisdom, he could not find fault with her
for her over-indulgence of the children, who had managed to convert Dinah the
preacher, before whom a circle of rough men had often trembled a little, into a
convenient household slave; though Dinah herself was rather ashamed of this
weakness, and had some inward conflict as to her departure from the precepts of
Solomon. Yes, there was one thing that might have been better
