proclaiming his final failure, and if at that moment he could have received from his father the offer to come and teach small boys at Fox Hall, he would have gone. And yet would he have gone? Could he abandon the delight of being with Pauline? The nearer he came to confessing his failure, the more he longed for her company. He was surely now in the midway of the thorny path of love, and whether he progressed or retreated he could not escape the spines. Well had he said to himself that night in May: '_La belle Dame sans mercy bath thee in thrall_.' All the fire and fever of his present life on the outskirts of a haunted country was for his imagination alone. However timidly his pen approached those dreams, they vanished; and whenever his pen betrayed him, Guy turned despairingly again to Pauline herself. These days without her were every day more unendurable. Once he had been content to talk about her to Mrs. Grey and her sisters, to listen to their praise of her: now every word they spoke wounded his pride. This madness of love could only feed itself in the very dungeons of his mind; and unless she were with him it did so horribly gorge itself that, if he had not swiftly seen her again, the madness would have broken the bars of its prison and ridden him like a hag. It was when Guy had worked himself to this pitch of desire for the remedy of her sweet presence that Pauline was denied to him. He knew he must blame himself because, even after the warning of that afternoon in the Abbey, whenever they were together he would carry her away into the country, whence they would not return sometimes until night had fallen. Worse than that, by his now continuous withdrawal from the life of the Rectory he must have disquieted her family. He saw that they were becoming anxious about Pauline, but for that very reason he could not bring himself to mitigate a solitary doubt of theirs. Even to talk about her in the lightest way was now become an outrage upon the seclusion of their joint life. Such a conversation as that with Margaret about the silver photograph frame was now unimaginable. What right had anyone to know even what picture of Pauline burned upon his wall in the night-time? At first Pauline herself when the memory of the shock her mother's words had been to her died out, tried to justify the attitude of guardianship. She would explain to Guy how, ever since she could remember, her mother and sisters had treated her with this vigilance. They had, as she said, always so much adored her that it was natural for them to be unable at once to relinquish entirely to someone else the complete possession of her. Yet Guy must not be jealous, because she told them none of her secrets now: indeed she was distressed at the thought of how far outside her confidence they reproachfully esteemed themselves. Her love for him had severely shaken the perfect unity of their immemorial life together, and he must be generous and understand