“And I! above all that I have known!”
They left the pathway and walked on mosses—soft yellow beds, run over with grey lichen, and plots of emerald in the midst.
“You will not fall off with your reading?” he recommenced.
She answered “Yes,” meaning “No”; and corrected the error languidly, thinking one of the weighty monosyllables as good as the other: for what was reading to her now?
“It would be ten thousand pities if you were to do as so many women do, when... when they make these great changes,” he continued.
“Of what avail is the improvement of the mind?” she said, and followed his stumble over the “when,” and dropped on it.
“Of what avail! Is marriage to stop your intellectual growth?”
“Without sympathy,” she faltered, and was shocked at what she said; but it seemed a necessity.
“You must learn to conquer the need for it.”
Alas! his admonition only made her feel the need more cravingly.