One of Our Conquerors - World eBook Library

George Meredith
did girl so give her soul.
She would have been the last to yield it unreservedly to a
man untrusted for the character she worshipped. But she
could have given it to Dartrey, despite his love of another,
because it was her soul, without any of the cravings, except
to bestow.
He perceived, that he had been carried on for the number
of steps which are countless miles and do not permit the
retreat across the desert behind; and he was in some amazement
at himself, remindful of the different nature of our
restraining power when we have a couple playing on it. Yet
here was this girl, who called him up to the heights of young
life again: and a brave girl; and she bled for the weak, had no
shrinking from the women underfoot: for the reason, that
she was a girl sovereignly pure, angelically tender. Was there
a point of honour to hold him back?
Nataly entered the room. She kissed Nesta, and sat silent.
‘Mother, will you speak of me to him, if I go out?’ Nesta
said.
‘We have spoken,’ her mother replied, vexed by the
unmaidenly allusion to that theme.
She would have asked, How did you guess I knew of it?—
but that the, Why should I speak of you to him? struck the
louder note in her bosom: and then, What is there that this
girl cannot guess!—filled the mother’s heart with apprehensive
dread: and an inward cry, What things will she not set
going, to have them discussed. And the appalling theme,
sitting offensive though draped in their midst, was taken for
a proof of the girl’s unblushingness. After standing as one
woman against the world so long, Nataly was relieved to be
on the side of a world now convictedly unjust to her in the
confounding of her with the shameless. Her mind had taken
the brand of that thought:—And Nesta had brought her to
it:—And Dudley Sowerby, a generous representative of the
world, had kindly, having the deputed power to do so, sustained
her, only partially blaming Nesta, not casting them
off; as the world, with which Nataly felt, under a sense of the
protection calling up all her gratitude to young Dudley, would
have approved his doing.
She was passing through a fit of the cowardice peculiar to
the tediously strained, who are being more than commonly
tried—persecuted, as they say when they are not supplicat-
365