And in the stillness of the wood all the incidents of their Sunday together came back upon her, and she stood breathless and amazed at the change which had passed over her life. Was it really she, Marcia Coryston, who had been drawn into that atmosphere of happy and impassioned religion?--drawn with a hand so gentle yet so irresistible? She had been most tenderly treated by them all, even by that pious martinet, Lord William. And yet, how was it that the general impression was that for the first time in her life she had been "dealt with," disciplined, molded, by those who had a much clearer idea than she herself had of what she was to do and where she was to go? Out of her mother's company she had been hitherto accustomed to be the center of her own young world; to find her wishes, opinions, prejudices eagerly asked for, and deferentially received. And she knew herself naturally wilful, conceited, keen to have her own way. But at Hoddon Grey, even in the most intimate and beautiful moments of the first love scenes between herself and Newbury, she had seemed to be entering upon--moving--in a world where almost nothing was left free for her to judge; where what she thought mattered very little, because it was taken for granted that she would ultimately think as Hoddon Grey thought; would be cherished, indeed, as the latest and dearest captive of the Hoddon Grey system and the Hoddon Grey beliefs. And she had begun already to know the exquisite, the intoxicating joys of self-surrender. Every hour had revealed to her something more of Newbury's lofty and singular character. The books and occupations amid which his home life was passed, the letters of his Oxford friends to him, and his to them; one letter in particular, from his chiefest and dearest friend, congratulating him on his engagement, which had arrived that morning--these things had been for Marcia so many steps in a new land, under new stars. The mixture in the man she was to marry, of gaiety, of an overflowing enjoyment of life, expressing itself often in an endless childish joking--with mystical sternness; the eager pursuit of beauty in art and literature, coupled with an unbending insistence on authority, on the Church's law, whether in doctrine or conduct, together with an absolute refusal to make any kind of terms with any sort of "Modernisms," so far at least as they affected the high Anglican ideal of faith and practice--in relation to these facts of Newbury's temperament and life she was still standing bewildered, half yielding and half combative. That she was loved, she knew--knew it through every vein and pulse. Newbury's delight in her, his tender worship of her, seemed to enwrap and encompass her. Now as she sat hidden amid the June trees, trembling under the stress of recollection, she felt herself enskied, exalted by such love. What could he see in her?--what was there in her--to deserve it?