
        labour than usual. But in this order of experience I am still young, and
        in looking forward to an unfavourable possibility I cannot but feel that
        resignation to solitude will be more difficult after the temporary
        illumination of hope. In any case, I shall remain, yours with sincere
        devotion,
                                                                EDWARD CASAUBON.
 
Dorothea trembled while she read this letter; then she fell on her knees, buried
her face, and sobbed. She could not pray; under the rush of solemn emotion in
which thoughts became vague and images floated uncertainly, she could but cast
herself, with a childlike sense of reclining, in the lap of a divine
consciousness which sustained her own. She remained in that attitude till it was
time to dress for dinner.
    How could it occur to her to examine the letter, to look at it critically as
a profession of love? Her whole soul was possessed by the fact that a fuller
life was opening before her: she was a neophyte about to enter on a higher grade
of initiation. She was going to have room for the energies which stirred
uneasily under the dimness and pressure of her own ignorance and the petty
peremptoriness of the world's habits.
    Now she would be able to devote herself to large yet definite duties; now
she would be allowed to live continually in the light of a mind that she could
reverence. This hope was not unmixed with the glow of proud delight - the joyous
maiden surprise that she was chosen by the man whom her admiration had chosen.
All Dorothea's passion was transfused through a mind struggling towards an ideal
life; the radiance of her transfigured girlhood fell on the first object that
came within its level. The impetus with which inclination became resolution was
heightened by those little events of the day which had roused her discontent
with the actual conditions of her life.
    After dinner, when Celia was playing an »air, with variations,« a small kind
of tinkling which symbolised the æsthetic part of the young ladies' education,
Dorothea went up to her room to answer Mr. Casaubon's letter. Why should she
defer the answer? She wrote it over three times, not because she wished to
change the wording, but because her hand was unusually uncertain, and she could
not bear that Mr. Casaubon should think her handwriting bad and illegible. She
piqued herself on writing a hand in which each letter was distinguishable
without any large range of conjecture, and she meant to make much use of this
accomplishment, to save Mr. Casaubon's eyes. Three times she wrote.
 
        My dear Mr. Casaubon, - I am very grateful
