‘I hope you won’t think me conceited if I agree with you, but I really think she does,’ said Kenrick, remembering that curious fainting fit on the first evening of Miss Harefield’s visit. He took heart of grace next day, finding Beatrix alone in the library an hour or so before the late tea. It was a windy afternoon, late in March, the sky dull and gray, the wood fire glowing redly, Beatrix seated in her low chair beside the hearth, with a book on her lap, deep in thought. ‘I don’t wonder you admire Pascal,’ she said, without looking up, as Kenrick came towards the hearth. ‘His is a most delicate wit.’ ‘I am sorry to say I don’t know anything about the gentleman,’ said Kenrick. ‘Did he write plays or novels?’ ‘I beg your pardon. I thought you were Mr. Dulcimer.’ ‘You took me for a better man than I am. All those rows of sober old books are Greek to me--worse than Greek, for I do know that by sight. I wonder that you can find so much happiness in this dry-as-dust collection of the dear Vicar’s.’ ‘I don’t know about happiness,’ answered Beatrix, with a faint sigh. ‘I find forgetfulness. I suppose that is almost as good.’ ‘There cannot be much in your young life that you can wish to forget,’ said Kenrick. ‘There is very little in it that I care to remember.’ ‘Erase it altogether from your memory then, and begin a new life from to-day,’ said Kenrick, flinging himself head foremost into a gulf of uncertain issues, like the diver who plunges into the fatal deep to win the king’s daughter. ‘Let the beginning of a brighter and happier life date from to-day. You are one of those flowers of earth which seem to be born to blush unseen. You, who are so worthy of love and admiration, have lived hidden from those who could admire and appreciate. But if a real and unmeasured love in the present can compensate for your losses in the past, that love is yours, Beatrix. I love you as I never thought I should love. I did not know that it was in my nature to feel as strongly as I feel for you. Stop--do not answer me too quickly,’ he cried, reading rejection in her look as she turned to him with the firelight shining on her face. ‘You will say, perhaps, “I am rich and you are poor. How am I to believe in your truth?”’ ‘I am not capable of thinking meanly of you,’ answered Beatrix. ‘But you ask me what is impossible. I have made up my mind never to marry.’ ‘Will you tell me the reason?’ ‘That is my secret.’ ‘I am not to be answered so easily, Beatrix. I love you too well to lose you without a struggle. I have spoken too soon, perhaps. I have been too precipitate. But I am to go back to India in a few weeks, and I should like to return with a new happiness--with at least the promise of your love.’