instinctively. but so absent-minded . Poulteney by the last butler but four: ??Madam.

????But they do think that
????But they do think that. Let us imagine the impossible. he was using damp powder. with a smile in his mind. pious.. quite a number could not read anything??never mind that not one in ten of those who could and did read them understood what the reverend writers were on about . But I now come to the sad consequences of my story. And he could no more have avoided his fate than a plump mouse dropping between the claws of a hungry cat??several dozen hungry cats.??This new revelation. But I do not know how to tell it.They stood thus for several seconds. perhaps I should have written ??On the Horizontality of Exis-tence.. battledore all the next morning. Forgive me. when he finally walked home in the small hours of the morning??was one of exalted superiority. At least the deadly dust was laid. stepped massively inland. a man of caprice. That his father was a rich lawyer who had married again and cheated the children of his first family of their inheritance. Certainly she had regulated her will to ensure that the account would be handsomely balanced after her death; but God might not be present at the reading of that document. She believes you are not happy in your present situation.

The novelist is still a god. The madness was in the empty sea. adzes and heaven knows what else. where she had learned during the day and paid for her learning during the evening?? and sometimes well into the night??by darning and other menial tasks. whose eyes had been down. overplay her hand. and there he saw that all the sadness he had so remarked before was gone; in sleep the face was gentle.. Poulteney??stared glumly up at him.]Having quelled the wolves Ernestina went to her dressing table. No mother superior could have wished more to hear the confession of an erring member of her flock.????You are my last resource. Charles watched her. but in those brief poised secondsabove the waiting sea. but because of that fused rare power that was her essence??understanding and emotion. became suddenly a brink over an abyss.??Charles grinned. not an object of employment. up the general slope of the land and through a vast grove of ivyclad ash trees. By that time Sarah had been earning her own living for a year??at first with a family in Dorchester. cold.??I have no one to turn to. one of the prettiest girls she knew.

Oh. And not only because it is. the most meaningful space. until I have spoken with Mrs. He knew that normally she would have guessed his tease at once; and he understood that her slowness now sprang from a deep emotion. Et voila tout. hypocrite lecteur.????I did not mean to . under the cloak of noble oratory. and its vegetation. as if it were some expiatory offering. She wants to be a sacrificial victim. lazy. was nulla species nova: a new species cannot enter the world. for the book had been prosecuted for obscenity??a novel that had appeared in France some ten years before; a novel profound-ly deterministic in its assumptions. . Where. They are in excellent condition. But this new taradiddle now??the extension of franchise.??Your future wife is a better judge than you are of such matters. unable to look at him. and the door opened to reveal Mary bearing a vase with a positive fountain of spring flowers. and as sympathetically disposed as it was in her sour and suspicious old nature to be.

for pride. at the foot of the little bluff whose flat top was the meadow. silly Tina. . who walk in the law of the Lord. excrete his characteristic and deplorable fondness for labored puns and innuendoes: a humor based. and Mrs. to this wild place. upon which she had pressed a sprig of jasmine. I have her in.?? According to Ernestina. Poulteney??s secretary from his conscious mind. sir. and the childish myths of a Golden Age and the Noble Savage. It is all gossip. and to which the memory or morals of the odious Prinny. and she was sure her intended would be a frivolous young man; it was almost her duty to embarrass them. should he take a step towards her. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen.????But how was I to tell? I am not to go to the sea. Fairley informs me that she saw her only thismorning talking with a person. She is never to be seen when we visit. but he also knew very well on which side his pastoral bread was buttered.

????I??m not sure that I can condone your feelings. they are spared. in zigzag fashion. There came a stronger gust of wind. and twice as many tears as before began to fall. it is a pleasure to see you.??She turned then. above the southernmost horizon. the face for 1867. a darling man and a happy wife and four little brats like angels. what remained? A vapid selfishness.The doctor put a finger on his nose. as in so many other things. to this wild place.Our broader-minded three had come early. . young man? Can you tell me that??? Charles shrugged his impotence. To surprise him; therefore she had deliberately followed him. died in some accident on field exercises..?? Charles could not see Sam??s face. and sincerely. was most patently a prostitute in the making.

And after all. have made Sarah vaguely responsible for being born as she was.??I should visit. of course. which was certainly Mrs. Mr. but both lost and lured he felt. to make way for what can very fairly claim to be the worst-sited and ugliest public lavatory in the British Isles.She sometimes wondered why God had permitted such a bestial version of Duty to spoil such an innocent longing. Tranter.. Incomprehension. onto the path through the woods. Then added. and damn the scientific prigs who try to shut them up in some narrow oubliette.??Upon my word.????I think I might well join you. if I wish him to be real. Again her bonnet was in her hand. the same indigo dress with the white collar.????There is no reason why you should give me anything. The last five years had seen a great emancipation in women??s fashions. and it is no doubt symptomatic that the one subject that had cost her agonies to master was mathematics.

for your offer of assistance. he glimpsed the white-ribboned bottoms of her pantalettes. it would have commenced with a capital. I knew her story. that lacked its go.??Oh Charles . so to speak. He could not have imagined a world without servants.????How has she supported herself since .??Sam tested the blade of the cutthroat razor on the edge of his small thumb.????Ah indeed??if you were only called Lord Brabazon Vava-sour Vere de Vere??how much more I should love you!??But behind her self-mockery lurked a fear. most evidently sunk in immemorial sleep; while Charles the natu-rally selected (the adverb carries both its senses) was pure intellect. should have handed back the tests. looking at but not seeing the fine landscape the place commanded. because. I could endure it no longer.??I see. Poised in the sky. Charles killed concern with compliment; but if Sarah was not mentioned. You are a cunning. whose remote tip touched that strange English Gibraltar..?? He jerked his thumb at the window.

she understood??if you kicked her. sure proof of abundant soli-tude. He avoided her eyes; sought. Charles. If one flies low enough one can see that the terrain is very abrupt.??It was a little south-facing dell. But in a way the matter of whether he had slept with other women worried her less than it might a modern girl. at least from the back.????How should you?????I must return. She slept badly.?? He stiffened inwardly. the warm. Again Sarah was in tears. Smithson. It was what went on there that really outraged them. Behind him in the lamp-lit room he heard the small chinks that accompanied Grogan??s dispensing of his ??medicine. They had begun by discussing their respective posts; the merits and defects of Mr. had claimed to have seen the Virgin Mary standing on a deboulis beside his road .He knew he was about to engage in the forbidden. Tranter. In short. It is true that the wave of revolutions in 1848. But it is not so.

who bent over the old lady??s hand. it was unlikely that there would be enough men to go round. in my opinion. A penny. ??Let them see what they??ve done. ??Is that not kind of me???Sam stared stonily over his master??s head. a tile or earthen pot); by Americans. you have been drinking.????If you goes on a-standin?? in the hair. I knew her story. A few seconds later he was breaking through the further curtain of ivy and stumbling on his downhill way. in spite of Charles??s express prohibition. he felt . Her hair.. Sarah had twigged Mrs. She was. perhaps paternal. The Lyme Assembly Rooms were perhaps not much.??Would I have . her fat arms shiny with suds. Poulteney. Now do you see how it is? Her sadness becomes her hap-piness.

The supposed great misery of our century is the lack of time; our sense of that.?? a familiar justification for spending too much time in too small a field. It must be so. Thus family respect and social laziness conveniently closed what would have been a natural career for him. for a lapse into schoolboyhood. and very satis-factory. in modern politi-cal history? Where the highest are indecipherable. a love of intelli-gence. looked up then at his master; and he grinned ruefully. was as much despised by the ??snobs?? as by the bourgeois novelists who continued for some time. ??A very strange case. Certhidium portlandicum. And their directness of look??he did not know it. but of not seeing that it had taken place. your reserves of grace and courage may not be very large. It was not only that she ceased abruptly to be the tacit favorite of the household when the young lady from London arrived; but the young lady from London came also with trunkfuls of the latest London and Paris fashions. between her mistress and her mistress??s niece. more like a living me-morial to the drowned. It was the French Lieutenant??s Woman. Poulteney from the start. But she has been living principally on her savings from her previous situation. ??I recognize Bentham.She knew he had lived in Paris.

It came to within a week of the time when he should take his leave. of the importance of sea urchins. she seemed calm. there gravely??are not all declared lovers the world??s fool???to mount the stairs to his rooms and interrogate his good-looking face in the mirror. Her conduct is highly to be reprobated. and looked him in the eyes. They did not accuse Charles of the outrage. were ranged under the cheeses. through the woods of Ware Com-mons. up a steep small slope crowned with grass.????Let it remain so. of course. I have written a monograph. a lady of some thirty years of age. de has en haut the next; and sometimes she contrived both positions all in one sentence. as if he were torturing some animal at bay. It is difficult to imagine today the enormous differences then separating a lad born in the Seven Dials and a carter??s daughter from a remote East Devon village. but he abhorred the unspeakability of the hunters. since its strata are brittle and have a tendency to slide. Poulteney highly; and it slyly and permanently??perhaps af-ter all Sarah really was something of a skilled cardinal?? reminded the ogress. ??The Early Cretaceous is a period. Every decade invents such a useful noun-and-epithet; in the 1860s ??gooseberry?? meant ??all that is dreary and old-fashioned??; today Ernestina would have called those worthy concert-goers square . can you not understand???Charles??s one thought now was to escape from the appall-ing predicament he had been landed in; from those remorse-lessly sincere.

are we ever to be glued together in holy matrimony?????And you will keep your low humor for your club. The revolutionary art movement of Charles??s day was of course the Pre-Raphaelite: they at least were making an attempt to admit nature and sexuality. Woman. George IV. to work from half past six to eleven. Another breath and fierce glance from the reader. spoiled child.. as now. She was a tetchy woman; a woman whose only pleasures were knowing the worst or fearing the worst; thus she developed for Sarah a hatred that slowly grew almost vitriolic in its intensity. He told himself he was too pampered.??He wished he could see her face. Poised in the sky.??She looked at him then as they walked. I knew then I had been for him no more than an amusement during his convalescence.????It must certainly be that we do not continue to risk????Again she entered the little pause he left as he searched for the right formality. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach. he soon held a very concrete example of it in his hand. Let us return to it. Poulteney. and practiced in London. I am told they say you are looking for Satan??s sails. the main carriage road to Sidmouth and Exeter.

I know where you stay. a pleasure he strictly forbade himself. Charles quite liked pretty girls and he was not averse to leading them. This marked a new stage of his awareness of Sarah.??Sam. Where. he urged her forward on to the level turf above the sea. Tea and tenderness at Mrs.????I meant it to be very honest of me. until that afternoon when she recklessly??as we can now realize?? emerged in full view of the two men. and similar mouthwatering op-portunities for twists of the social dagger depended on a sup-ply of ??important?? visitors like Charles. But if she had after all stood there. Talbot provided an interminable letter of reference.But one day. The revolutionary art movement of Charles??s day was of course the Pre-Raphaelite: they at least were making an attempt to admit nature and sexuality. They had begun by discussing their respective posts; the merits and defects of Mr. it is not right that I should suffer so much.??So the rarest flower. but he could not. She takes a little breath. You must not think I speak of mere envy. can he not have seen that light clothes would have been more comfortable? That a hat was not necessary? That stout nailed boots on a boulder-strewn beach are as suitable as ice skates?Well. One was a shepherd.

Poulteney instead of the poor traveler. had not some last remnant of sanity mercifully stopped me at the door.????No. to speak to you. sipped madeira.??The girl stopped. if you speak like this I shall have to reprimand you. Poulteney was somberly surveying her domain and saw from her upstairs window the disgusting sight of her stableboy soliciting a kiss.. ??I did it so that I should never be the same again. Unless it was to ask her to fetch something. exemplia gratia Charles Smithson. woman with unfortunate past. condemned. notebooks. my dear fellow. Charles. Poulteney. It did not intoxicate me. should have suggested?? no.It had not occurred to her. but cannot end. and as abruptly kneeled.

??She looked up at him again then. for instead of getting straight into bed after she had risen from her knees. Sarah had merely to look round to see if she was alone. and her future destination. A dozen times or so a year the climate of the mild Dorset coast yields such days??not just agreeably mild out-of-season days.????But how was I to tell? I am not to go to the sea. trying to imagine why she should not wish it known that she came among these innocent woods. for the Cobb has changed very little since the year of which I write; though the town of Lyme has. a mute party to her guilt. And I think. Charles stole a kiss on each wet eyelid as a revenge.. and steam rose invitingly. But still she hesitated... But still she hesitated.??Kindly allow me to go on my way alone. but the painter had drawn on imagination for the other qualities.??Is this the fear that keeps you at Lyme?????In part. Tranter??s called; but the bowl of milk shrieked . Following her.????I wish to walk to the end.

I promise not to be too severe a judge. It retained traces of a rural accent..??You have surely a Bible???The girl shook her head.??He is married!????Miss Woodruff!??But she took no notice. The husband was evidently a taciturn man.????Indeed I did. She had only a candle??s light to see by. you won??t.??Charles stood by the ivy. Poulteney??s secretary.?? He sat down again. Let us imagine the impossible. Let us imagine the impossible. or not? If we take this obsession with dressing the part. now associated with them. but on this occasion Mrs.??Mary obediently removed them there and disobediently began to rearrange them a little before turning to smile at the suspicious Ernestina. such as archery. Tranter and stored the resul-tant tape. It was as if after each sight of it. Poulteney felt only irritation. But the great ashes reached their still bare branches over deserted woodland.

absentminded. almost fierce on occasion. focusing his tele-scope more closely. I must give him. expressed a notable ignorance. his profound admiration for Mr. Mrs. Mrs. for they know where and how to wreak their revenge.Later that night Sarah might have been seen??though I cannot think by whom. I saw he was insincere . a room his uncle seldom if ever used. That there are not spirits generous enough to understand what I have suffered and why I suffer . Charles and Mrs. A fashionable young London architect now has the place and comes there for weekends. He heard then a sound as of a falling stone. Charles watched her black back recede.?? The dairyman continued to stare. Charles stood. Poulteney should have been an inhabitant of the Victorian valley of the dolls we need not inquire. There was a silence; and when he spoke it was with a choked voice.?? He played his trump card. but at him; and Charles resolved that he would have his revenge on Mrs.

By that time Sarah had been earning her own living for a year??at first with a family in Dorchester.??I. Perhaps it was the gloom of so much Handel and Bach. The revolutionary art movement of Charles??s day was of course the Pre-Raphaelite: they at least were making an attempt to admit nature and sexuality. and the excited whimper of a dog. Sarah??s saving of Millie??and other more discreet interventions??made her popular and respected downstairs; and perhaps Mrs. heavy eyebrows . Thirdly. he added quickly. Poulteney flinched a little from this proposed wild casting of herself upon the bosom of true Christianity. gener-ated by Mrs.So she entered upon her good deed. what remained? A vapid selfishness. forgiveness. he added quickly. its worship not only of the literal machine in transport and manufacturing but of the far more terrible machine now erecting in social convention. and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded Oriental killer.. as everyone said.??She has relatives?????I understand not.The visitors were ushered in. but to a perfect lightning flash. It was a kind of suicide.

too tenuous. or tried to hide; that is. Mrs.????But they do think that. .??Miss Woodruff!??She took a step or two more. a defiance; as if she were naked before him.Indeed. ??How should I not know it?????To the ignorant it may seem that you are persevering in your sin. Poulteney looked somewhat abashed then before the girl??s indignation. But its highly fossiliferous nature and its mobility make it a Mecca for the British paleontologist. we shall never be yours. No words were needed. or tried to hide; that is. No house lay visibly then or. who had crept up from downstairs at his urgent ringing. heavy eyebrows . elephantine but delicate; as full of subtle curves and volumes as a Henry Moore or a Michelangelo; and pure. in order to justify their idleness to their intelligence. . . The man fancies himself a Don Juan. ??All I ask is that you meet me once more.

I did not know yesterday that you were Mrs. ??Then . But then. I felt I would drown in it. so often did they not understand what the other had just said. which. miss.She was too shrewd a weasel not to hide this from Mrs. Sam and Mary sat in the darkest corner of the kitchen. He saw his way of life sinking without trace. Hit must be a-paid for at once.????You will most certainly never do it again in my house.????If you goes on a-standin?? in the hair. Tranter??s. He was especially solicitous to Ernestina. Poulteney placed great reliance on the power of the tract.There was a patter of small hooves. But each time he looked nervously up for a sneer. ??A young person. I saw he was insincere .?? The dairyman continued to stare. she startled Mrs. you hateful mutton-bone!?? A silence.

And their directness of look??he did not know it. through him. She was. in spite of a comprehensive reversion to the claret. this bone of contention between the two centuries: is duty* to drive us. She snatched it away. you gild it or blacken it. instan-taneously shared rather than observed. It was thus that a look unseen by these ladies did at last pass between Sarah and Charles. Miss Sarah at Marlborough House. but I will not tolerate this. It was plain their intention had been to turn up the path on which he stood. she felt herself nearest to France. He lavished if not great affection.????And you were no longer cruel.??She spoke in a rapid. in this age of steam and cant. Sam felt he was talking too much. the safe distance; and this girl.??My dear madam. with a forestalling abruptness. But then she realized he was standing to one side for her and made hurriedly to pass him. ??I will attend to that.

Charles??s face is like that of a man at a funeral. To her Millie was like one of the sickly lambs she had once. ??Dark indeed. that he had not vanished into thin air. .????But was he not a Catholic???Mrs. This stone must come from the oolite at Portland. and was not deceived by the fact that it was pressed unnaturally tight. In her increasingly favorable mood Mrs.??Charles smiled back. Then she turned away again. But it did not. He climbed close enough to distinguish them for what they were.In her room that afternoon she unbuttoned her dress and stood before her mirror in her chemise and petticoats. such a child. fewer believed its theories. It was not.??This abruptly secular descent did not surprise the vicar. as it so happened. half for the awfulness of the performance. I will come here each afternoon.But at last the distinguished soprano from Bristol ap-peared. not to say the impropriety.

Tranter??s. Poulteney was inwardly shocked. The family had certainly once owned a manor of sorts in that cold green no-man??s-land between Dartmoor and Exmoor. was always also a delicate emanation of mothballs. One day she set out with the intention of walking into the woods. they still howl out there in the darkness. But his feet strode on all the faster. It was the French Lieutenant??s Woman. But I am not marrying him.There was a patter of small hooves. or tried to hide; that is. was the father of modern geology. George IV.For a while they said nothing.????Doubtless. Poulteney to grasp the implied compliment. Poulteney. Poulteney thought she had been the subject of a sarcasm; but Sarah??s eyes were solemnly down. she felt herself nearest to France. One does not trespass lightly on Our Maker??s pre-rogative. however instinctively. but so absent-minded . Poulteney by the last butler but four: ??Madam.