Shirley

her: she withdraws from my reach. Once, this day, I lifted her face, resolved to get a full look down her deep, dark eyes: difficult to describe what I read there! Pantheress! – beautiful forest-born! – wily, tameless, peerless nature! She gnaws her chain: I see the white teeth working at the steel! She has dreams of her wild woods, and pinings after virgin freedom. I wish Sympson would come again, and oblige her again to entwine her arms about me. I wish there was danger she should lose me, as there is risk I shall lose her. No: final loss, I do not fear; but long delay –
    It is now night – midnight. I have spent the afternoon and evening at Fieldhead. Some hours ago she passed me, coming down the oak-staircase to the hall: she did not know I was standing in the twilight, near the staircase-window, looking at the frost-bright constellations. How closely she glided against the banisters! How shyly shone her large eyes upon me! How evanescent, fugitive, fitful, she looked, – slim and swift as a Northern Streamer!
    I followed her into the drawing-room: Mrs. Pryor and Caroline Helstone were both there: she has summoned them to bear her company awhile. In her white evening dress; with her long hair flowing full and wavy; with her noiseless step, her pale cheek, her eye full of night and lightning, she looked, I thought, spirit-like, – a thing made of an element, – the child of a breeze and a flame, – the daughter of ray and rain-drop, – a thing never to be overtaken, arrested, fixed. I wished I could avoid following her with my gaze, as she moved here and there, but it was impossible. I talked with the other ladies as well as I could, but still I looked at her. She was very silent: I think she never spoke to me, – not even when she offered me tea. It happened that she was called out a minute by Mrs. Gill. I passed into the moon-lit hall, with the design of getting a word as she returned; nor in this did I fail.
    ›Miss Keeldar, stay one instant!‹ said I, meeting her.
    ›Why? – the hall is too cold.‹
    ›It is not cold for me: at my side, it should not be cold for you.‹
    ›But I shiver.‹
    ›With fear, I believe. What makes you fear me? You are quiet and distant: why?‹
    ›I may well fear what looks like a great dark goblin meeting me in the moonlight.‹
    ›
Do not
–
do not
pass! – stay with me awhile: let us exchange a few quiet words. It is three days since I spoke to you alone: such changes are cruel.‹
    ›I have no wish to be cruel,‹ she responded, softly enough: indeed, there was softness in her whole deportment, – in her face, in her voice; but there was also reserve, and an air fleeting, evanishing, intangible.
    ›You certainly give me pain,‹ said I. ›It is hardly a week since you called me your future husband, and treated me as such; now I am once more the tutor for you: I am addressed as Mr. Moore, and Sir; your lips have forgotten Louis.‹
    ›No, Louis, no: it is an easy, liquid name; not soon forgotten.‹
    ›Be cordial to Louis, then: approach him, – let him approach.‹
    ›I
am
cordial,‹ said she, hovering aloof like a white shadow.
    ›Your voice is very sweet, and very low,‹ I answered, quietly advancing: ›you seem subdued, but still startled.‹
    ›No, – quite calm, and afraid of nothing,‹ she assured me.
    ›Of nothing but your votary.‹
    I bent a knee to the flags at her feet.
    ›You see I am in a new world, Mr. Moore. I don't know myself, – I don't know you: but rise; when you do so, I feel troubled and disturbed.‹
    I obeyed: it would not have suited me to retain that attitude long. I courted serenity and confidence for her, and not vainly: she trusted, and clung to me again.
    ›Now, Shirley,‹ I said, ›you can conceive I am far from happy in my present uncertain unsettled state.‹
    ›Oh, yes; you
are
happy!‹ she cried, hastily: ›you don't know how happy you are! – any change will be for the worse!‹
    ›Happy or not, I cannot bear to go on so much longer: you are too generous to require it.‹
    ›Be reasonable, Louis, – be patient! I like you because you are patient.‹
    ›Like me no longer, then, – love me instead: fix our marriage-day. Think of it to-night, and decide.‹
    She breathed a murmur, inarticulate yet expressive; darted, or melted, from my arms – and I lost her.«
     
     
Chapter XXXVII
The Winding-Up
    Yes, reader, we must settle accounts now. I have only briefly to narrate the final fates of