At these moments he would look up towards the castle, and
picture the morrow's consummation; and his heart would have a
convulsion. Imagination flew on the wings of his desire. She
stood before him in all her sumptuous womanhood, tender and
strong and glowing. As he spoke, her eyes lightened, her eyes
burned, the blood came and went in her cheeks; her lips parted.
Then she whispered something; and his heart leapt terribly; and
he called her name--"Beatrice! Beatrice!" Her name expressed
the inexpressible--the adoring passion, the wild hunger and
wild triumph of his soul. But now she was moving towards him
--she was holding out her hands. He caught her in his arms--he
held her yielding body in his arms. And his heart leapt
terribly, terribly. And he wondered how he could endure, how
he could live through, the hateful hours that must elapse
before tomorrow would be to-day.
But "hearts, after leaps, ache." Presently the whirl would
begin again; and then, by and by, in another lull, a contrary
answer would seem equally plain.
"Tell her, indeed? My dear man, are you mad? She would simply
be amazed, struck dumb, by your presumption. I can see from
here her incredulity--I can see the scorn with which she would
wither you. It has never dimly occurred to her as conceivable
that you would venture to be in love with her, that you would
dare to lift your eyes to her--you who are nothing, to her who
is all. Yes--nothing, nobody. In her view, you are just a
harmless nobody, whose society she tolerates for kindness'
sake--and faute de mieux. It is precisely because she deems
you a nobody--because she is profoundly conscious of the gulf
that separates you from her--that she can condescend to be
amiably familiar. If you were of a rank even remotely
approximating to her own, she would be a thousand times more
circumspect. Remember--she does not dream that you are Felix
Wildmay. He is a mere name to her; and his story is an amusing
little romance, perfectly external to herself, which she
discusses with entirely impersonal interest. Tell her by all
means, if you like Say, 'I am Wildmay--you are Pauline.' And
see how amazed she will be, and how incensed, and how
indignant."
Then he would look up at the castle stonily, in a mood of
desperate renunciation, and vaguely meditate packing his
belongings, and going home to England.
At other moments a third answer would seem the plain one:
something between these extremes of optimism and pessimism, a
compromise, it not a reconciliation.