Page:Eliot - Felix Holt, the Radical, vol. II, 1866.djvu/187

Rh ported his head, which was turned towards her. Suddenly he said, in a lower tone than was habitual to him,

"You are very beautiful."

She started and looked round at him, to see whether his face would give some help to the interpretation of this novel speech. He. was looking up at her quite calmly, very much as a reverential Protestant might look at a picture of the Virgin, with a devoutness suggested by the type rather than by the image. Esther's vanity was not in the least gratified: she felt that, somehow or other, Felix was going to reproach her.

"I wonder," he went on, still looking at her, "whether the subtle measuring of forces will ever come to measuring the force there would be in one beautiful woman whose mind was as noble as her face was beautiful—who made a man's passion for her rush in one current with all the great aims of his life."

Esther's eyes got hot and smarting. It was no use trying to be dignified. She had turned away her head, and now said, rather bitterly, "It is difficult for a woman ever to try to be anything good when she is not believed in—when it is always supposed that she must be contemptible."