the enjoyment. It had been dimly and richly conjectured as a
hoped result. Small favours from her were really worth, thrice worth, the utmost
from other women. They tasted the sweeter for the winning of them artfully - an
honourable thing in love. Nature, rewarding the lover's ingenuity and
enterprise, inspires him with old Greek notions of right and wrong: and love is
indeed a fluid mercurial realm, continually shifting the principles of rectitude
and larceny. As long as he means nobly, what is there to condemn him? Not she in
her heart. She was the presiding divinity.
    And she, his Tony, that splendid Diana, was the woman the world abused! Whom
will it not abuse?
    The slough she would have to plunge in before he could make her his own with
the world's consent, was already up to her throat. She must, and without further
hesitation, be steeped, that he might drag her out, washed of the imputed
defilement, and radiant, as she was in character. Reflection now said this; not
impulse.
    Her words rang through him. At every meeting she said things to confound his
estimate of the wits of women, or be remembered for some spirited ring they had:
- A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird. He murmured it and flew
with her. She quickened a vein of imagination that gave him entrance to a
strangely brilliant sphere, above his own, where, she sustaining, he too could
soar; and he did, scarce conscious of walking home, undressing, falling asleep.
    The act of waking was an instantaneous recovery of his emotional rapture of
the overnight; nor was it a bar to graver considerations. His Chief had gone
down to a house in the country; his personal business was to see and sound the
followers of their party - after another sight of his Tony. She would be sure to
counsel sagaciously; she always did. She had a marvellous intuition of the
natures of the men he worked with, solely from his chance descriptions of them:
it was as though he started the bird and she transfixed it. And she should not
have matter to ruffle her smooth brows: that he swore to. She should sway him as
she pleased, be respected after her prescribed manner. The promise must be
exacted; nothing besides the promise. - You see. Tony, you cannot be less than
Tony to me now, he addressed the gentle phantom of her. Let me have your word,
and I am your servant till the Session ends. - Tony blushes her