Phoebe had advantages. She was at hand, he saw her every day at meals and was ready to believe that she revealed every day some new, shy prettiness, she was tractable, malleable in the future and his without effort in the present, and it was comforting to think of her softness when all his else was harsh endeavor and wounded pride and a long stern struggle to success. While Dorothy Verners was of the struggle, yet a man must relax sometimes, as Mr. Bantison had thought when he put Burgundy before the discretion which becomes a blackmailer. Reuben chewed upon it, not reconciled to surrendering Dorothy, not quite convinced by the most convincing of arguments he addressed to himself, unwilling, even if they had convinced, to let go any part of his full scheme, but inclining, feeling himself a bit of a fool, a bit of an apostate, and very much more a prodigy of generosity, to look upon Phoebe as one whom he might make his wife. Thus (on the whole) well-intentioned towards her, he proposed one summer’s morning to take her out walking, which was partly a gesture addressed to his hesitations, and partly a deliberate means to a closer acquaintance than he could compass indoors in the single living-room where Peter hampered by too faithful attendance on his pupil. He mentioned his wish, a little too grandly, a little too much like a royal command. Phoebe had her wisdom and the weeks of their intercourse had rubbed away the first bloom of his divinity: he ate like other mortals, and, like the sort of mortals she despised in her pose of ladyhood, he labored in the factory. She had conceived ambition which, as he seemed to level himself down to her, looked not impossible to realize, if she sustained in his eyes her quality of ladyhood. And to go out had its perils. She flowered indoors and her little graces withered in the open air, when she knew she reverted to type, walked freely with great strides and swung across the moors like any weaver’s lass hurrying to work. These things, she thought, were discounts off her value: but they might, just possibly, be a winning card. They might announce that she had variety. “To walk,” she said, “with you?” “Oh, not too far for a lady,” he assured her, “and not too fast.” “You,” she retorted, “ride too much. I’ll walk you off your legs.” So she challenged him, with wisdom.