Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 3.djvu/55

 vague, dazzling presence, an irradiation of light from objects undefined, mixed with the atmosphere of Paris and of Venice. He presently added that a hundred things Muniment had told him about the foul horrors of the worst districts of London, pictures of incredible shame and suffering that he had put before him, came back to him now, with the memory of the passion they had kindled at the time.

'Oh, I don't want you to go by what I have told you; I want you to go by what you have seen yourself. I remember there were things you told me that weren't bad in their way.' And at this Paul Muniment sprang to his feet, as if their conversation had drawn to an end, or they must at all events be thinking of their homeward way. Hyacinth got up, too, while his companion stood there. Muniment was looking off toward London, with a face that expressed all the healthy singleness of his vision. Suddenly Paul remarked, as if it occurred to him to complete, or at any rate confirm, the declaration he had made a short time before, 'Yes, I don't believe in the millennium, but I do believe in the democracy.'

The young man, as he spoke these words, struck his comrade as such a fine embodiment of the spirit of the people; he stood there, in his powerful, sturdy newness, with such an air of having learnt what he had learnt and of good-nature that had purposes in it, that our hero felt the simple inrush of his old, frequent pride at having a person of that promise, a nature of that capacity, for a friend. He passed his hand into Muniment's arm and said, with an imperceptible tremor in his voice, 'It's no use your saying I'm not to go by what you tell me. I