"And you had been annoyed with those rebellious school boys! You are not half strict enough with the choristers. I hope Aultane will get a flogging, as Lewis did for locking you up in St. James's Church. I asked Lewis the next day how he liked it: he was so savage. I think he'd murder you if he could: he's jealous, you know." She laughed as she spoke the last words, and her gay blue eyes were bent on him; he could discern them even in the dark, obscure corner where the deanery door stood. Henry did not answer: he was in wretched spirits. "Harry, tell me--why is it you so rarely come to the deanery? Do you think any other college boy would dare to set at nought the dean's invitations--and mine?" "Remembering what passed between us one night at the deanery--the audit night--can you wonder that I do not oftener come?" he inquired. "Oh, but you were so stupid." "Yes, I know. I have been stupid for years past." Miss Beauclerc laughed. "And you think that stopping away will cure you?" "It will not cure me; years will not cure me," he passionately broke forth, in a tone whose anguish was irrepressible. "Absence and _you_ alone will do that. When I go to the university----" He stopped, unable to proceed. "When you go to the university you will come back a wise man. Henry," she continued, changing her manner to seriousness, "it was the height of folly to suffer yourself to care for me. If I--if it were reciprocated, and I cared for you, if I were dying of love for you, there are barriers on all sides, and in all ways." "I am aware of it. There is the barrier between us of disparity of years; there is a wide barrier of station; and there is the greatest barrier of all, want of love on your side. I know that my loving you has been nothing short of madness, from the first: madness and double madness since I knew where your heart was given." "So you will retain that crotchet in your head!" "It is no crotchet. Do you think my loving eyes--my jealous eyes, if you so will it--have been deceived? You must be happy, now that he has come back to Westerbury." "Stupid!" echoed Miss Beauclerc. "But it has been your fault, Georgina," he resumed, reverting to himself. "I _must_ reiterate it. You saw what my feelings were becoming for you, and you did all you could to draw them on; you may have deemed me a child then in years; you knew I was not, in heart. They might have been checked in the onset, and repressed: why did you not do it? why did you do just the contrary, and give me encouragement? You called it flirting; you thought it good sport: but you should have remembered that what is sport to one, may be death to another."