dutifully at ten o??clock at Aunt Tranter??s house. but turned to the sea. that Mrs. the mouth he could not see.

but why I did it
but why I did it.??Not exackly hugly.. Smithson. action against the great statesman; and she was an ardent feminist?? what we would call today a liberal. A stronger squall????She turned to look at him??or as it seemed to Charles. Sarah heard the girl weeping. seen sleeping so. Again you notice how peaceful.The conversation in that kitchen was surprisingly serious. It??s this. Burkley. It took his mind off domestic affairs; it also allowed him to take an occasional woman into his bed. The beating of his heart like some huge clock;And then the strong pulse falter and stand still.??Mrs. Aunt Tranter probably knew them as well as anyone in Lyme. And what I say is sound Christian doctrine.

the lamb would come two or three times a week and look desolate..Though Charles liked to think of himself as a scientific young man and would probably not have been too surprised had news reached him out of the future of the airplane. of Sarah Woodruff. but fixed him with a look of shock and bewilderment. with the declining sun on his back. She was a governess. like Ernestina??s. as the good lady has gone to take tea with an invalid spinster neighbor; an exact facsim-ile. Do not come near me. without looking at him again. A dry little kestrel of a man.Mary was not faultless; and one of her faults was a certain envy of Ernestina. But a message awaited me. as if he had miraculously survived a riot or an avalanche.Mary??s great-great-granddaughter..

She was the first person to see the bones of Ichthyosaurus platyodon; and one of the meanest disgraces of British paleontology is that although many scientists of the day gratefully used her finds to establish their own reputation. There were more choked sounds in the silent room. And then I was filled with a kind of rage at being deceived. Poulteney. I think.????Charles .????I bet you ??ave. better.??I understand. He still stood parting the ivy. Such a place was most likely to yield tests; and Charles set himself to quarter the area. he had to the full that strangely eunuchistic Hibernian ability to flit and flirt and flatter womankind without ever allowing his heart to become entangled. My innocence was false from the moment I chose to stay. tore off his nightcap.??And I wish to hear what passed between you and Papa last Thursday. Nature goes a little mad then. Poulteney??s horror of the carnal.

And you must allow me to finish what I was about to say. part of me understands. and then was mock-angry with him for endangering life and limb. television. unlocked a drawer and there pulled out her diary. He did not always write once a week; and he had a sinister fondness for spending the afternoons at Winsyatt in the library. he did not argue. except that his face bore a wide grin. but out of the superimposed strata of flint; and the fossil-shop keeper had advised him that it was the area west of the town where he would do best to search. that could very well be taken for conscious-ness of her inferior status. For a few moments she became lost in a highly narcissistic self-contemplation. Charming house. When he had dutifully patted her back and dried her eyes. Poulteney with her creaking stays and the face of one about to announce the death of a close friend.????But. Or was. I felt I had to see you.

In one place he had to push his way through a kind of tunnel of such foliage; at the far end there was a clearing. and she seemed to forget Mrs. ??They have indeed. if Romeo had not mercifully appeared on the scene that previ-ous winter. already remarked on by Charles. my dear lady. Poulteney??s secretary from his conscious mind. He spoke no English.??She walked away from him then. We who live afterwards think of great reformers as triumphing over great opposition or great apathy. And there. It was still strange to him to find that his mornings were not his own; that the plans of an afternoon might have to be sacrificed to some whim of Tina??s. Furthermore I have omitted to tell you that the Frenchman had plighted his troth. Tranter only a very short time. He felt flattered. whose purpose is to prevent the heat from the crackling coals daring to redden that chastely pale complex-ion). she might even have closed the door quietly enough not to wake the sleepers.

he hardly dared to dwell. The ex-governess kissed little Paul and Virginia goodbye. and every day. I wish for solitude.. for reviewers. Poulteney; it now lay in her heart far longer than the enteritis bacilli in her intes-tines. ??I interrupted your story. Half Harley Street had examined her. an independence of spirit; there was also a silent contradiction of any sympathy; a determination to be what she was. one morning only a few weeks after Miss Sarah had taken up her duties. Smithson?? an agreeable change from the dull crop of partners hitherto presented for her examination that season. he found in Nature. One was her social inferior. It??s this. whom on the whole he liked only slightly less than himself. she did.

There is only one good definition of God: the freedom that allows other freedoms to exist. surrounded by dense thickets of brambles and dogwood; a kind of minute green amphitheater. that he doesn??t know what the devil it is that causes it. A farmer merely. He was in no danger of being cut off. of the condition. Like many insulated Victorian dowagers.. She looked to see his reaction.??He left a silence. She wore the same black coat. Tests vary in shape. and gave her a faintly tomboyish air on occasion. it could never be allowed to go out.????How romantic. It was as if. She could not bring herself to speak to Charles.

he would do. Mary could not resist trying the green dress on one last time. why should we deny to others what has made us both so happy? What if this wicked maid and my rascal Sam should fall in love? Are we to throw stones???She smiled up at him from her chair. early visitors. occupied in an implausible adjustment to her bonnet. I drank the wine he pressed on me. Talbot. and there he saw that all the sadness he had so remarked before was gone; in sleep the face was gentle. She takes a little breath. exquisitely grave and yet full of an inner.?? Sarah looked down before the accusing eyes. whose name now he could not even remember. selfish . ??I prefer to walk alone. Sarah had twigged Mrs. Console your-self. and Captain Talbot wishes me to suggest to you that a sailor??s life is not the best school of morals.

??I meant to tell you. ??I fear I don??t explain myself well. existed; but they were explicable as creatures so depraved that they overcame their innate woman??s disgust at the carnal in their lust for money. moved ahead of him. your prospect would have been harmonious. You must not think I speak of mere envy. and goes on. lazy. I know he would have wished??he wishes it so. ??You are kind. Poulteney had been a little ill. And what the feminine. pages of close handwriting.??But I??m intrigued. he had one disappointment.A few seconds later he was himself on the cart track back to Lyme. .

??And she has confided the real state of her mind to no one?????Her closest friend is certainly Mrs. he decided to endanger his own) of what he knew. the centuries-old mark of the common London-er.. It was certain??would Mrs. His eyes are still closed. to see him hatless. So? In this vital matter of the woman with whom he had elected to share his life. since Sarah. as innocent as makes no matter. into love. and Mrs. and resting over another body. Then matters are worse than I thought.????And you will believe I speak not from envy???She turned then. while she was ill. was left well provided for.

but emerged in the clear (voyant trop pour nier. Smithson. and if mere morality had been her touchstone she would not have behaved as she did??the simple fact of the matter being that she had not lodged with a female cousin at Weymouth. to the eyes. so that she faced the sea; and so. that their sense of isolation??and if the weather be bad.??The Sam who had presented himself at the door had in fact borne very little resemblance to the mournful and indig-nant young man who had stropped the razor. now associated with them. He toyed with the idea. Cupid is being unfair to Cockneys. In London the beginnings of a plutocratic stratification of society had.She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs.. but ravishing fragments of Mediterranean warmth and luminosity. You are a cunning. I feel cast on a desert island.??Miss Woodruff!?? He raised his hat.

as the man that day did. she would turn and fling herself out of his sight. she would have had the girl back at the first. A penny. with Disraeli and Gladstone polarizing all the available space?You will see that Charles set his sights high. And heaven knows the simile was true also for the plowman??s daughter. ??You will kindly remember that he comes from London. still with her in the afternoon. Fairley never considered worth mentioning) before she took the alley be-side the church that gave on to the greensward of Church Cliffs. In neither field did anything untoward escape her eagle eye. I have Mr. not a disinterested love of science. I am hardly human any more. Mrs. Sarah??s father had three times seen it with his own eyes; and returned to the small farm he rented from the vast Meriton estate to brood. the low comedy that sup-ported his spiritual worship of Ernestina-Dorothea. in time and distance.

Smithson. and became entangled with that of a child who had disappeared about the same time from a nearby village. He thought of the pleasure of waking up on just such a morning. ??Like that heverywhere.??She made a little movement of her head.. fragile. Too pleas-ing. floated in the luminous clearing behind Sarah??s dark figure. wrappings. Talbot knew French no better than he did English. In the monkey house. Poulteney??s that morning. what would happen if you should one day turn your ankle in a place like this. And that was her health. so together. and he winked.

Like many of his contemporaries he sensed that the earlier self-responsibility of the century was turning into self-importance: that what drove the new Britain was increasing-ly a desire to seem respectable. He sold his portion of land. Thus it was that two or three times a week he had to go visiting with the ladies and suffer hours of excruciating boredom. ??Sir. The result. It had always been considered common land until the enclosure acts; then it was encroached on. But that was in a playful context. Genesis is a great lie; but it is also a great poem; and a six-thousand-year-old womb is much warmer than one that stretches for two thousand million.Fairley. commanded??other solutions to her despair. Her exhibition of her shame had a kind of purpose; and people with purposes know when they have been sufficiently attained and can be allowed to rest in abeyance for a while. But as one day passed. a thing she knew to be vaguely sinful. That is all. with her. moun-tains. Poulteney.

Of course Ernestina uttered her autocratic ??I must not?? just as soon as any such sinful speculation crossed her mind; but it was really Charles??s heart of which she was jealous. a shrewd sacrifice.Whether they met that next morning. And I would not allow a bad word to be said about her.?? She left an artful pause. was always also a delicate emanation of mothballs. a truly orgastic lesbianism existed then; but we may ascribe this very com-mon Victorian phenomenon of women sleeping together far more to the desolating arrogance of contemporary man than to a more suspect motive. Poulteney on her own account. Mary was the niece of a cousin of Mrs. But his generation were not altogether wrong in their suspicions of the New Britain and its statesmen that rose in the long economic boom after 1850.????Therefore I deduce that we subscribe to the same party. His calm exterior she took for the terrible silence of a recent battlefield. But she has been living principally on her savings from her previous situation.Just as you may despise Charles for his overburden of apparatus. beauty. a crushing and unrelenting canopy of parental worry.?? He added.

love. for white. vast. since his moral delicacy had not allowed him to try the simple expedient of a week in Ostend or Paris. like one used to covering long distances. if blasphemous. I saw he was insincere . an irrelevant fact that had petrified gradually over the years into the assumption of a direct lineal descent from the great Sir Francis. There was the mandatory double visit to church on Sundays; and there was also a daily morning service??a hymn. A few moments later there was an urgent low whistle. as drunkards like drinking.??I know a secluded place nearby. behind his square-rimmed spectacles. through that thought??s fearful shock. and Charles bowed. It seemed to me then as if I threw myself off a precipice or plunged a knife into my heart. It was thus that a look unseen by these ladies did at last pass between Sarah and Charles.

the tall Charles with his vague resem-blance to the late Prince Consort and the thin little doctor.In other words. however much of a latterday Mrs. from previous references. and there was a silence. Mrs. a thoroughly human moment in which Charles looked cautiously round. Poulteney had built up over the years; what satanic orgies she divined behind every tree. They served as a substitute for experience. And his advice would have resembled mine.????They are what you seek?????Yes indeed. miss.When he came to where he had to scramble up through the brambles she certainly did come sharply to mind again; he recalled very vividly how she had lain that day. when he called dutifully at ten o??clock at Aunt Tranter??s house. but turned to the sea. that Mrs. the mouth he could not see.