the heels of her shoes were mudstained. Thus the simple fact that he had never really been in love became clear proof to Ernestina.

There too I can be put to proof
There too I can be put to proof. doctor of the time called it Our-Lordanum. During the last three years he had become increasingly interested in paleontology; that. Weller would have answered the bag of soot. Certainly it has cost them enough in repairs through the centuries to justify a certain resentment. a respectable place. then he walked round to the gorse. but it was the tract-delivery look he had received??contained a most peculiar element of rebuffal. and the white stars of wild strawberry. matched by an Odysseus with a face acceptable in the best clubs. The new warmth.????What about???????Twas just the time o?? day.????Mr. But that face had the most harmful effect on company. Poulteney was not a stupid woman; indeed. the main carriage road to Sidmouth and Exeter. Charles. to be free myself. He was aggressively contemptuous of anything that did not emanate from the West End of London. madam. as compared with 7. Their servants they tried to turn into ma-chines. and saw nothing.

Fursey-Harris to call.. After all.. Tranter??s house. I find this new reality (or unreality) more valid; and I would have you share my own sense that I do not fully control these crea-tures of my mind.A few seconds later he was himself on the cart track back to Lyme. light and graceful. it was Mrs. Do not come near me. Insipid her verse is. a litany learned by heart. fragrant air. and died very largely of it in 1856.??All they fashional Lunnon girls. He came to his sense of what was proper. Very dark. I know the girl in question. then he walked round to the gorse.????That is very wicked of you.??The door was shut then. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to. to whom it had become familiar some three years previously.

Poulteney began.?? The person referred to was the vicar of Charmouth. there was inevitably some conflict. but because of that fused rare power that was her essence??understanding and emotion. Charles quite liked pretty girls and he was not averse to leading them. She saw that there was suffering; and she prayed that it would end. The ??sixties had been indisputably prosper-ous; an affluence had come to the artisanate and even to the laboring classes that made the possibility of revolution recede. We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words. I have come prepared to listen to what you wished me . politely but firmly. you would have seen something very curious. Another girl. This walk she would do when the Cobb seemed crowded; but when weather or cir-cumstance made it deserted. She had taken off her bonnet and held it in her hand; her hair was pulled tight back inside the collar of the black coat??which was bizarre. I understand you have excellent qualifications. whom she knew would be as congenial to Charles as castor oil to a healthy child. The visits were unimportant: but the delicious uses to which they could be put when once received! ??Dear Mrs. Is anyone else apprised of it?????If they knew. one foggy night in London. it was unlikely that there would be enough men to go round.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living.So she entered upon her good deed. But though one may keep the wolves from one??s door.

and the silence. Poulteney??s. where the concerts were held. not from the book.??I do not know her. then turned. and was much closer at hand.?? There was another silence. of Mrs. by saying: ??Sam! I am an absolute one hundred per cent heaven forgive me damned fool!??A day or two afterwards the unadulterated fool had an interview with Ernestina??s father. ??You will kindly remember that he comes from London. selfish . If she went down Cockmoil she would most often turn into the parish church. Tranter??s.However. and given birth to a menacing spirit of envy and rebellion. was all it was called. was still faintly under the influence of Lavater??s Physiognomy. at Mrs. the flood of mechanistic science??the ability to close one??s eyes to one??s own absurd stiffness was essential. sir. was ??Mrs. sir.

to where the path joined the old road to Charmouth. if not on his lips. freezing to the timid. for another wind was blowing in 1867: the beginning of a revolt against the crinoline and the large bonnet.????No one frequents it. he had felt much more sym-pathy for her behavior than he had shown; he could imagine the slow.??But what is the sin in walking on Ware Commons?????The sin! You. She looked towards the two figures below and then went on her way towards Lyme.. but she habitually allowed herself this little cheat.. the ineffable . humorous moue. And I think. A chance meeting with someone who knew of his grandfather??s mania made him realize that it was only in the family that the old man??s endless days of supervising bewildered gangs of digging rus-tics were regarded as a joke. Her weeping she hid.??There was a little silence.But it was not. It gave the ladies an excellent opportunity to assess and comment on their neighbors?? finery; and of course to show off their own. At least the deadly dust was laid. and she clapped her hand over her mouth. She did not get on well with the other pupils. since ??Thou shall not wear grenadine till May?? was one of the nine hundred and ninety-nine com-mandments her parents had tacked on to the statutory ten.

and looked at it as if his lips might have left a sooty mark. perhaps paternal. After some days he returned to France. May I help you back to the path???But she did not move. By circumstances.What she did not know was that she had touched an increasingly sensitive place in Charles??s innermost soul; his feeling that he was growing like his uncle at Winsyatt. It was The Origin of Species. rounded arm thrown out. and cannot believe. one the vicar had in fact previously requested her not to ask. The girl came and stood by the bed. how decor-conscious the former were in their approach to external reality. But to a less tax-paying. how decor-conscious the former were in their approach to external reality. He stared into his fire and murmured. The cottage walls have crumbled into ivied stumps. let open the floodgates to something far more serious than the undermining of the Biblical account of the origins of man; its deepest implications lay in the direction of determinism and behaviorism. Mr. and goes on.The girl lay in the complete abandonment of deep sleep. as if she might faint should any gentleman dare to address her.. Charles had found himself curious to know what political views the doctor held; and by way of getting to the subject asked whom the two busts that sat whitely among his host??s books might be of.

She stared at it a moment. as Ernestina. And Miss Woodruff was called upon to interpret and look after his needs. but she had also a wide network of relations and acquaint-ances at her command. these two innocents; and let us return to that other more rational.????It was a warning. but was distracted by the necessity of catching a small crab that scuttled where the gigantic subaqueous shadow fell on its vigilant stalked eyes. Charles was thus his only heir; heir not only to his father??s diminished fortune??the baccarat had in the end had its revenge on the railway boom??but eventually to his uncle??s very considerable one.?? ??But what is she doing there??? ??They say she waits for him to return. Then he moved forward to the edge of the plateau. Then added. Charles stood. and all she could see was a dark shape. blush-ing. Poulteney. then repeating the same procedure. with a quick and elastic step very different from his usual languid town stroll. they are spared. I attend Mrs.. which deprived her of the pleasure of demanding why they had not been anticipated. but not too severely.Charles had already visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those days??the Old Fossil Shop.

But I do not need kindness. but it was the tract-delivery look he had received??contained a most peculiar element of rebuffal. at times.So Charles sat silent. But when he crossed the grass and looked down at her ledge.Mary??s great-great-granddaughter. I am to walk in the paths of righteousness.Who is Sarah?Out of what shadows does she come?I do not know. ??is not one man as good as another??? ??Faith. But the doctor was unforthcoming.?? Charles too looked at the ground. All conspired. madam. as soon as the obstacular uncle did his duty); or less sly ones from the father on the size of the fortune ??my dearest girl?? would bring to her husband. the same indigo dress with the white collar. surrounded by dense thickets of brambles and dogwood; a kind of minute green amphitheater. He called me cruel when I would not let him kiss my hand. their freedom as well. but it must be confessed that the fact that it was Lyme Regis had made his pre-marital obligations delightfully easy to support. I was reminded of some of the maritime sceneries of Northern Portugal. For the gentleman had set his heart on having an arbore-tum in the Undercliff. he pursued them ruthlessly; and his elder son pursued the portable trophies just as ruthlessly out of the house when he came into his inheritance. Nor English.

????Is that what made you laugh?????Yes. of a passionate selfishness. or being talked to. Since then she has waited. and why Sam came to such differing conclusions about the female sex from his master??s; for he was in that kitchen again. you now threaten me with a scandal.????At my age. because I request it. The voice..??But I??m intrigued. by the woman on the grass outside the Dairy. I did it so that people should point at me. She stared at it a moment. Tranter. I doubt if Mrs. A slightly bolder breeze moved the shabby red velvet curtains at the window; but in that light even they looked beautiful. and there was her ??secluded place. One was a shepherd. for people went to bed by nine in those days before electricity and television.??He accordingly described everything that had happened to him; or almost everything. staring. free as a god.

Intelligent idlers always have. the countryside around Lyme abounds in walks; and few of them do not give a view of the sea.??He found her meekness almost as disconcerting as her pride. Poachers slunk in less guiltily than elsewhere after the pheasants and rabbits; one day it was discovered. It is not that amateurs can afford to dabble everywhere; they ought to dabble everywhere. He told me he was to be promoted captain of awine ship when he returned to France. she would turn and fling herself out of his sight. forgiveness.. Poulteney. she remained; with others she either withdrew in the first few minutes or discreetly left when they were announced and before they were ushered in.However. almost dewlaps. which loom over the lush foliage around them like the walls of ruined castles. And when her strong Christian principles showed him the futility of his purposes. That moment redeemed an infinity of later difficulties; and perhaps. when he called dutifully at ten o??clock at Aunt Tranter??s house. of course. a rider clopped peacefully down towards the sea. The old lady had detected with her usual flair a gross dereliction of duty: the upstairs maid whose duty it was unfailingly each Tuesday to water the ferns in the second drawing room??Mrs. trying to imagine why she should not wish it known that she came among these innocent woods. smiling; and although her expression was one of now ordinary enough surprise. But no doubt he told her he was one of our unfortunate coreligionists in that misguided country.

in such wells of loneliness is not any coming together closer to humanity than perver-sity?So let them sleep. but it would be most improper of me to . But she saw that all was not well. but I was in tears.?? the Chartist cried. tentative sen-tence; whether to allow herself to think ahead or to allow him to interrupt. He knew it as he stared at her bowed head. and disappeared into the interior shadows.??Shall I continue?????You read most beautifully. as well as understanding. from which you might have shaken out an already heavy array of hammers. Dr.??My good woman. and the rare trees stayed unmolested. He was less strange and more welcome. nonentity; and the only really signifi-cant act of his life had been his leaving it. as others suffer in every town and village in this land. he found himself greeted only by that lady: Ernestina had passed a slightly disturbed night. that Charles??s age was not; but do not think that as he stood there he did not know this. That is. ??I have had a letter. a rider clopped peacefully down towards the sea. for the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write; though the town of Lyme has.

he found in Nature..??He accordingly described everything that had happened to him; or almost everything. Let us turn.??This phrase had become as familiar to Mrs. There is not a single cottage in the Undercliff now; in 1867 there were several. Were no longer what they were.She knew he had lived in Paris.??Now what is wrong???????Er. in carnal possession of a naked girl. A pursued woman jumped from a cliff.??But what is the sin in walking on Ware Commons?????The sin! You. A few seconds later he was breaking through the further curtain of ivy and stumbling on his downhill way. Poulteney stood suddenly in the door.??I did not suppose you would. which curved down a broad combe called Ware Valley until it joined. They served as a substitute for experience.. And with ladies of her kind. Sarah heard the girl weeping. Nonetheless. There came a stronger gust of wind. and the tests less likely to be corroded and abraded.

But she was then in the first possessive pleasure of her new toy. must seem to a stranger to my nature and circum-stances at that time so great that it cannot be but criminal. He knew.. I know in the manufacturing cities poverties and solitude exist in comparison to which I live in comfort and luxury. kind Mrs.????That is very wicked of you. Miss Tina???There was a certain eager anxiety for further information in Mary??s face that displeased Ernestina very much. After all.????That does not excuse her in my eyes. But when I read of the Unionists?? wild acts of revenge. since the old lady rose and touched the girl??s drooping shoulder. of falling short. The farther he moved from her.I gave the two most obvious reasons why Sarah Woodruff presented herself for Mrs. but Sam did most of the talking. They knew it was that warm. He suddenly wished to be what he was with her; and to discover what she was. He had intended to write letters.He looked round.????You are caught. and the poor woman??too often summonsed for provinciality not to be alert to it??had humbly obeyed. There was only one answer to a crisis of this magnitude: the wicked youth was dispatched to Paris.

Or at least he tried to look seriously around him; but the little slope on which he found himself. The world would always be this.????That is what I meant to convey. The wind had blown her hair a little loose; and she had a faint touch of a boy caught stealing apples from an orchard . But they comprehended mysterious elements; a sentiment of obscure defeat not in any way related to the incident on the Cobb. They served as a substitute for experience. just con-ceivably. When he returned to London he fingered and skimmed his way through a dozen religious theories of the time. though sadly. A man perhaps; some assignation? But then he remembered her story. whom the thought of young happiness always made petulant.??It was higgerance. or at any rate with the enigma she presented. I was afraid lest you had been taken ill. Evolution and all those other capitalized ghosts in the night that are rattling their chains behind the scenes of this book . Poulteney??s in-terest in Charles was probably no greater than Charles??s in her; but she would have been mortally offended if he had not been dragged in chains for her to place her fat little foot on??and pretty soon after his arrival. selfish .??Silence. He avoided her eyes; sought. Yet he never cried. Prostitutes. but each time Sarah departed with a batch to deliver Mrs. or the girl??s condition.

??A demang. at times. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. A dozen times or so a year the climate of the mild Dorset coast yields such days??not just agreeably mild out-of-season days. and she had heard Sam knock on the front door downstairs; she had heard the wicked and irreverent Mary open it??a murmur of voices and then a distinct. you say. kind lady knew only the other.000 years. so also did two faces.Now Mrs. occupied in an implausible adjustment to her bonnet. year after year. Until she had come to her strange decision at Weymouth. of course??it being Lent??a secular concert. All was supremely well. I can-not believe that the truth is so. kind lady knew only the other. Poulteney. since he had moved commercially into central London. and waited.??Do but think. Doctor Grogan was not financially very dependent on Mrs. He felt the warm spring air caress its way through his half-opened nightshirt onto his bare throat.

than that it was the nearest place to Lyme where people could go and not be spied on. upon which she had pressed a sprig of jasmine.??It had been a very did-not sort of day for the poor girl. Her sharper ears had heard a sound.????For finding solitude. let us say she could bring herself to reveal the feelings she is hiding to some sympathetic other person??????She would be cured. of course. and steam rose invitingly. However. with a forestalling abruptness. as if he is picturing to himself the tragic scene. She was afraid of the dark. her back to Sarah. that mouth. his reading. the hour when the social life of London was just beginning; but here the town was well into its usual long sleep. is not meant for two people. such as that monstrous kiss she had once seen planted on Mary??s cheeks. I have searched my soul a thousand times since that evening. The skin below seemed very brown. He determined to give it to Ernestina when he returned.?? There was silence. he decided that the silent Miss Woodruff was laboring under a sense of injustice??and.

But he did not give her??or the Cobb??a second thought and set out. the cart track to the Dairy and beyond to the wooded common was a de facto Lover??s Lane. It was the girl.????Their wishes must be obeyed. She now asked a question; and the effect was remark-able. as now. you??d do. We got by very well without the Iron Civilizer?? (by which he meant the railway) ??when I was a young man.Now tests do not come out of the blue lias. he decided that the silent Miss Woodruff was laboring under a sense of injustice??and. I think our ancestors?? isolation was like the greater space they enjoyed: it can only be envied. Again Charles stiffened. who had giggled at the previous week??s Punch when Charles showed it to her. as he hammered and bent and examined his way along the shore. ??I wish you hadn??t told me the sordid facts.????Cross my ??eart.????Well.. and worse. And I do not mean he had taken the wrong path. madam. for curiosity. I believe.

????No gentleman who cares for his good name can be seen with the scarlet woman of Lyme. Progress. I don??t know who he really was. He hesitated a while; but the events that passed before his eyes as he stood at the bay window of his room were so few. Poulteney??s face. she was as ignorant as her mistress; but she did not share Mrs. The eye in the telescope might have glimpsed a magenta skirt of an almost daring narrowness??and shortness. Mr. Fairley. But I now come to the sad consequences of my story. No romance. He searched on for another minute or two; and then. at some intolerable midnight hour. Again she glanced up at Charles.??I told him as much at the end of his lecture here. but was distracted by the necessity of catching a small crab that scuttled where the gigantic subaqueous shadow fell on its vigilant stalked eyes.?? She bit her lips. eight feet tall; its flowers that bloom a month earlier than any-where else in the district. never see the world except as the generality to which I must be the exception. Talbot supposed.?? She bit her lips. He was not there. She believed me to be going to Sher-borne.

A strong nose. Charles saw she was faintly shocked once or twice; that Aunt Tranter was not; and he felt nostalgia for this more open culture of their respective youths his two older guests were still happy to slip back into. Mr. her face half hidden by the blossoms. and disrespect all my quasi-divine plans for him. I believe. to the very edge. cradled to the afternoon sun.?? But Sam had had enough.On Mrs...????A girl?????That is. as if he were torturing some animal at bay. She was certainly dazzled by Sam to begin with: he was very much a superior being. Poulteney had never set eyes on Ware Commons. It had begun. I un-derstand. Sam was some ten years his junior; too young to be a good manservant and besides. Tranter chanced to pass through the hall??to be exact. and scent of syringa and lilac mingled with the blackbirds?? songs. at ease in all his travel..

She must have heard the sound of his nailed boots on the flint that had worn through the chalk. But you must see I have . Nonetheless. that Charles had entered when he had climbed the path from the shore at Pinhay Bay; and it was this same place whose eastern half was called Ware Commons. She turned imme-diately to the back page. Lyell??s Principles of Geology. In that inn. people about him. He might perhaps have seen a very contemporary social symbolism in the way these gray-blue ledges were crumbling; but what he did see was a kind of edificiality of time.. You mark my words. rich in arsenic. where she had learned during the day and paid for her learning during the evening?? and sometimes well into the night??by darning and other menial tasks.?? cries back Paddy. and all because of a fit of pique on her part. you haven??t been beheading poor innocent rocks?? but dallying with the wood nymphs. there was no sign. a cook and two maids.. that can be almost as harmful. My mind was confused. and Charles languidly gave his share. I do not mean that I knew what I did.

out of the copper jug he had brought with him. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell them about the girl; a facetious way of describing how he had come upon her entered his mind; and yet seemed a sort of treachery. was left well provided for. . the ambulacra. husband a cavalry officer.His ambition was very simple: he wanted to be a haber-dasher.??It was.. I am afraid. slip into her place. it was empty; and very soon he had forgotten her.The vicar coughed.He knew at once where he wished to go.Once again Sarah showed her diplomacy. gives vivid dreams. He stepped quickly behind her and took her hand and raised it to his lips. wrappings. A dry little kestrel of a man.He knew he was about to engage in the forbidden. His father had died three months later. Instead they were a bilious leaden green??one that was. Poulteney suddenly had a dazzling and heavenly vision; it was of Lady Cotton.

He knew he would have been lying if he had dismissed those two encounters lightly; and silence seemed finally less a falsehood in that trivial room.??There was a little pause. Fortunately none of these houses overlooked the junction of cart track and lane. Grogan??s coming into his house one afternoon and this colleen??s walking towards the Cobb.??What am I to do???Miss Sarah had looked her in the eyes. you??re right. intellectually as alphabetically. and Ernestina had been very silent on the walk downhill to Broad Street. But I am not marrying him. which was emphatically French; as heavy then as the English. But Ernest-ina had reprimanded her nurse-aunt for boring Charles with dull tittle-tattle. I am expected in Broad Street. the insignia of the Liberal Party. Sam stood stropping his razor. by seeing that he never married.??So the rarest flower. But I??ve never had the least cause to??????My dear.??He accordingly described everything that had happened to him; or almost everything.????I have decided you are up to no good. And his advice would have resembled mine.. Aunt Tranter did her best to draw the girl into the conversation; but she sat slightly apart. would no doubt seem today almost in-tolerable for its functional inadequacies.

of failing her. He had been frank enough to admit to himself that it contained. Poulteney??s large Regency house.????If you ??ad the clothes.??*[* Omphalos: an attempt to untie the geological knot is now forgot-ten; which is a pity. and twice as many tears as before began to fall.??An eligible has occurred to me. I regret to say that he did not deserve that appellation. this proof. though not true of all. Poulteney had devoted some thought to the choice of passage; and had been sadly torn between Psalm 119 (??Blessed are the undefiled??) and Psalm 140 (??Deliver me. ??I meant to tell you. All we can do is wait and hope that the mists rise.. lama. and it seems highly appropriate that Linnaeus himself finally went mad; he knew he was in a labyrinth. Not that Charles much minded slipping. her Balmoral boots. a false scholarship. I told her so. and steam rose invitingly. and that the heels of her shoes were mudstained. Thus the simple fact that he had never really been in love became clear proof to Ernestina.