stopped told him of the satisfactory shock administered. He could not be angry with her. which lay sunk in a transverse gully. in that light.

??My only happiness is when I sleep
??My only happiness is when I sleep. once again. Even if Charles had not had the further prospects he did. had given her only what he had himself received: the best education that money could buy. charming . a broad.. I have no choice. With Sam in the morning. and who had in any case reason enough??after an evening of Lady Cotton??to be a good deal more than petulant.Further introductions were then made. it must be confessed. And then suddenly put a decade on his face: all gravity. I have seen a good deal of life. mum. to ask why Sarah. staff of almost eccentric modesty for one of his connections and wealth.. ??I wished also. by a mere cuteness.

She is possessed.??There was a little silence. It was plain their intention had been to turn up the path on which he stood. Another look flashed between them. Poulteney looked somewhat abashed then before the girl??s indignation. There is One Above who has a prior claim. Poulteney may have real-ized. which. methodically. Her sharper ears had heard a sound. He wished he might be in Cadiz.????What have I done?????I do not think you are mad at all. intel-lectual distance above the rest of their fellow creatures. one may think. he came on a path and set off for Lyme. Poulteney instead of the poor traveler. of course; but she had never even thought of doing such a thing. but a man of excellent princi-ples and highly respected in that neighborhood.. I know that he is.

and so delightful the tamed gentlemen walking to fetch the arrows from the butts (where the myopic Ernestina??s seldom landed. Tranter.Well. You are not too fond. And let me have a double dose of muffins. but I will not have you using its language on a day like this.????But was he not a Catholic???Mrs. then a minor rage among the young ladies of En-gland??the dark green de rigueur was so becoming. as well as a gift. lean ing with a straw-haulm or sprig of parsley cocked in the corner of his mouth; of playing the horse fancier or of catching sparrows under a sieve when he was being bawled for upstairs.????A total stranger . and by most fashionable women. A stronger squall????She turned to look at him??or as it seemed to Charles. So let us see how Charles and Ernestina are crossing one particular such desert. mum. selfish . bending. She had fine eyes. Tranter and her two young companions were announced on the morning following that woodland meeting. With a kind of surprise Charles realized how shabby clothes did not detract from her; in some way even suited her.

Indeed her mouth did something extraordinary. ??He was very handsome.I will not make her teeter on the windowsill; or sway forward.?? Which is Virgil. and practiced in London.?? Sarah read in a very subdued voice. a branch broken underfoot.They saw in each other a superiority of intelligence. as if body disapproved of face and turned its back on such shamelessness; because her look. I??ave haccepted them.The girl lay in the complete abandonment of deep sleep. Charles stood close behind her; coughed. and more than finer clothes might have done. when they returned to their respective homes. Poulteney??stared glumly up at him.. and then up to the levels where the flint strata emerged. then bent to smell it. To the young men of the one she had left she had become too select to marry; to those of the one she aspired to. intellectually as alphabetically.

????They were once marine shells???He hesitated. Grogan??s little remark about the comparative priority to be accorded the dead and the living had germinated. it was Mrs. who could number an Attorney-General. and began to comb her lithe brown hair. though it was mainly to the scrubbed deal of the long table. So much the better for us? Perhaps. Very dark.. seen sleeping so. That is not a sin. For a few moments she became lost in a highly narcissistic self-contemplation. Not even the sad Victorian clothes she had so often to wear could hide the trim. by one of those terrible equations that take place at the behest of the superego. She wore the same black coat.. How could the only child of rich parents be anything else? Heaven knows??why else had he fallen for her???Ernestina was far from characterless in the context of other rich young husband-seekers in London society. She saw that there was suffering; and she prayed that it would end. Two chalky ribbons ran between the woods that mounted inland and a tall hedge that half hid the sea. with Lyell and Darwin still alive? Be a statesman.

to whom it had become familiar some three years previously. on the outskirts of Lyme. It is true also that she took some minimal precautions of a military kind. Above all. made especially charming in summer by the view it afforded of the nereids who came to take the waters.?? He smiled grimly at Charles.??Kindly allow me to go on my way alone. Sam stood stropping his razor. And although I still don??t understand why you should have honored me by interesting me in your . but the sea urchins eluded him. He went down to the drawing room. especially from the back. Most probably it was because she would. ??I found a lodging house by the harbor. the difference in worth. cold. mocking those two static bipeds far below. Poulteney and her kind knew very well that the only building a decent town could allow people to congregate in was a church.]This was perceptive of Charles. too.

perhaps remembering the black night of the soul his first essay in that field had caused. social stagnation; they knew. in which inexorable laws (therefore beneficently divine. since it lies well apart from the main town.. still with her in the afternoon. Talbot to seek her advice. But his wrong a??s and h??s were not really comic; they were signs of a social revolution. ??I think that was not necessary. since only the servants lived there??and the other was Immorality. of course; but she had never even thought of doing such a thing. You were not born a woman with a natural respect. To this distin-guished local memory Charles had paid his homage??and his cash. Poulteney. out of sight of the Dairy. she had taken her post with the Talbots. Fairley will give you your wages. either. therefore. Since they were holding hands.

Another girl. a quiet assumption of various domestic responsibilities that did not encroach. and ended by making the best of them for the rest of the world as well. Ernestina plucked Charles??s sleeve. But I am a heretic. that he was being. her Balmoral boots.He knew at once where he wished to go. Aunt Tranter backed him up.But it was not. miss. and wished she had kept silent; and Mrs. yet a mutinous guilt. Indeed she made a pretense of being very sorry for ??poor Miss Woodruff?? and her reports were plentifully seasoned with ??I fear?? and ??I am afraid. with his top hat held in his free hand. From the air .. but it seemed to him less embarrassment than a kind of ardor.. that Mrs.

free as a god.????You lived for your hounds and the partridge season. he too heard men??s low voices. A pursued woman jumped from a cliff.His uncle bored the visiting gentry interminably with the story of how the deed had been done; and whenever he felt inclined to disinherit??a subject which in itself made him go purple. She looked to see his reaction. where there had been a recent fall of flints. . Since they were holding hands. but fraternal. during which Charles could. Then one morning Miss Sarah did not appear at the Marlborough House matins; and when the maid was sent to look for her. at any rate an impulse made him turn and go back to her drawing room. ??I was called in??all this. climbed further cliffs masked by dense woods. their stupidities. Charles thought of that look as a lance; and to think so is of course not merely to de-scribe an object but the effect it has. trembling. both clearly embarrassed. will one day redeem Mrs.

he could not believe its effect. its black feathers gleaming. ??His wound was most dreadful. She was the first person to see the bones of Ichthyosaurus platyodon; and one of the meanest disgraces of British paleontology is that although many scientists of the day gratefully used her finds to establish their own reputation. It did not intoxicate me. I have difficulty in writing now. a tile or earthen pot); by Americans. But halfway down the stairs to the ground floor. ??Mary? I would not part with her for the world. what she had thus taught herself had been very largely vitiated by what she had been taught. I was unsuccessful. corn-colored hair and delectably wide gray-blue eyes. Charles had many generations of servant-handlers behind him; the new rich of his time had none?? indeed. in a not unpleasant bittersweet sort of way.??So they began to cross the room together; but halfway to the Early Cretaceous lady. a dark shadow. Nothing is more incomprehensible to us than the methodicality of the Victori-ans; one sees it best (at its most ludicrous) in the advice so liberally handed out to travelers in the early editions of Baedeker. as if she could not bring herself to continue..??That might have been a warning to Charles; but he was too absorbed in her story to think of his own.

religion. not to say the impropriety. I have her in.. Meanwhile the two men stood smiling at each other; the one as if he had just con-cluded an excellent business deal. When he discovered what he had shot. for he was about to say ??case. a biased logic when she came across them; but she also saw through people in subtler ways. a swift sideways and upward glance from those almost exophthalmic dark-brown eyes with their clear whites: a look both timid and forbidding..????Taren??t so awful hard to find.??I think the only truly scarlet things about you are your cheeks. Jem!???? and the sound of racing footsteps. He appeared far more a gentleman in a gentleman??s house. He stared into his fire and murmured. From another drawer she took a hidden key and unlocked the book. and Mary she saw every day. How I was without means.??You are quite right. without the slightest ill effect.

Unprepared for this articulate account of her feelings. He saw the cheeks were wet. Poulteney as a storm cone to a fisherman; but she observed convention. whirled galaxies that Catherine-wheeled their way across ten inches of rock. blasphemous. You may have been. but out of the superimposed strata of flint; and the fossil-shop keeper had advised him that it was the area west of the town where he would do best to search. Even if Charles had not had the further prospects he did. But it was an unforgettable face. the mind behind those eyes was directed by malice and resentment.??He saw a second reason behind the gift of the tests; they would not have been found in one hour.If you had gone closer still. frontiers. that I had let a spar that might have saved me drift out of reach. but did not turn.????What about???????Twas just the time o?? day.????I bet you ??ave. I do not know. It was pretty enough for her to like; and after all.Partly then.

????Cut off me harms.????It was Mrs. since she founds a hospital. who de-clared that he represented the Temperance principle. But fortunately she had a very proper respect for convention; and she shared withCharles??it had not been the least part of the first attraction between them??a sense of self-irony. Very soon he marched firmly away up the steeper path.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. ??Another dress??? he suggested diffidently. wanted Charles to be that husband. salt. And she died on the day that Hitler invaded Poland.She was in a pert and mischievous mood that evening as people came in; Charles had to listen to Mrs. sir. Poulteney approached the subject. at least a series of tutors and drill sergeants on his son. When the doctor dressed his wound he would clench my hand. and a girl who feels needed is already a quarter way in love. that they had things to discover.??Never mind now. his knowledge of a larger world.

making a rustic throne that commanded a magnificent view of the treetops below and the sea beyond them. Nature goes a little mad then. but an essential name; he gave the age. the one remaining track that traverses it is often impassable. And you must allow me to finish what I was about to say. But he told me he should wait until I joined him. her apparent total obeisance to the great god Man. Most probably it was because she would. like one used to covering long distances.The poor girl had had to suffer the agony of every only child since time began??that is. she inclined her head and turned to walk on. Needless to say. This walk she would do when the Cobb seemed crowded; but when weather or cir-cumstance made it deserted. I am well aware that that is your natural condition. panting slightly in his flannel suit and more than slightly perspiring. You have no family ties.????Never mind. mummifying clothes. But this is what Hartmann says..

as mere stupidity.?? again she shook her head. Poulteney saw her servants with genuinely attentive and sometimes positively religious faces.Dr. I have my ser-vants to consider. Such a place was most likely to yield tests; and Charles set himself to quarter the area. Did not feel happy. to be free of parents . my dear Mrs. I do not mean that I knew what I did. by one of those inexplicable intuitions. Once there. with a warm southwesterly breeze.Mrs. in only six months from this March of 1867. He turned to his man. But instead of continu-ing on her way. ??It came to seem to me as if I were allowed to live in paradise. therefore. hesitate to take the toy to task.

It was not so much what was positively in that face which remained with him after that first meeting. too spoiled by civilization.????It was he who introduced me to Mrs. ??I possess this now. who lived some miles behind Lyme. running down to the cliffs. since it failed disgracefully to condemn sufficiently the governess??s conduct. Not what he was like. The old man??s younger son. Charles set out to catch up. however. but she did not turn.??I have given. Poulteney; it now lay in her heart far longer than the enteritis bacilli in her intes-tines. your reserves of grace and courage may not be very large. bent in a childlike way. Poulteney had built up over the years; what satanic orgies she divined behind every tree. The girl came and stood by the bed. who could number an Attorney-General. but from some accident or other always got drunk on Sundays.

The big house in Belgravia was let. in much less harsh terms. all those abysses unbridged and then unbridgeable by radio. He retained her hand. Not that Charles much minded slipping.????And what are the others?????The fishermen have a gross name for her..??All they fashional Lunnon girls. accompanied by the vicar. ??You shall not have a drop of tea until you have accounted for every moment of your day. In the monkey house. as not infrequently happens in a late English afternoon. You may rest assured of that. you??ve been drinking again.. Now the Undercliff has reverted to a state of total wildness. to see if she could mend.So if you think all this unlucky (but it is Chapter Thir-teen) digression has nothing to do with your Time. Nor did it manifest itself in the form of any particular vivacity or wit. ??You look to sea.

that can be almost as harmful. overplay her hand. it cannot be a novel in the modern sense of the word.??????From what you said??????This book is about the living. A long moment of locked eyes; and then she spoke to the ground between them. and the childish myths of a Golden Age and the Noble Savage. like Ernestina??s. and every day. Sam. when she died. It was as if he had shown a callous lack of sympathy. stupider than the stupidest animals. there was inevitably some conflict. and a fiddler. I detest immorality. He was detected.????Let us elope.Charles had already visited what was perhaps the most famous shop in the Lyme of those days??the Old Fossil Shop. I saw marriage with him would have been marriage to a worthless adventurer.??In such circumstances I know a .

but sat with her face turned away. she had indeed jumped; and was living in a kind of long fall.????Let us elope. year after year. and the silence. but the sea urchins eluded him. compared to those at Bath and Cheltenham; but they were pleasing. in everything but looks and history. not one native type bears the specific anningii. she stared at the ground a moment. and their fingers touched. in short.?? Charles put on a polite look of demurral.??Charles! Now Charles.????Mind you. the day she had thought she would die of joy. To her Millie was like one of the sickly lambs she had once. Tranter??s. But still she hesitated. both in land and money.

?? She looked down at her hands. The author was a Fellow of the Royal Society and the leading marine biologist of his day; yet his fear of Lyell and his followers drove him in 1857 to advance a theory in which the anomalies between science and the Biblical account of Creation are all neatly removed at one fine blow: Gosse??s ingenious argument being that on the day God created Adam he also created all fossil and extinct forms of life along with him??which must surely rank as the most incomprehensible cover-up operation ever attributed to divinity by man. It was half past ten. He went down to the drawing room.??That might have been a warning to Charles; but he was too absorbed in her story to think of his own.??There passed a tiny light in Mary??s eyes. He had certainly been a Christian. The ??sixties had been indisputably prosper-ous; an affluence had come to the artisanate and even to the laboring classes that made the possibility of revolution recede. out of sight of the Dairy. though with a tendency to a certain grandiose exaggeration of one or two of Charles??s physical mannerisms that he thought particularly gentlemanly.????I did not mean to . But to a less tax-paying. do I not?????You do.??A thousand apologies. the empty horizon. ??Will you come to see me??when dear Tina has gone??? For a second then. But the way the razor stopped told him of the satisfactory shock administered. He could not be angry with her. which lay sunk in a transverse gully. in that light.