Page:Yeast. A Problem - Kingsley (1851).djvu/43

 kept his room rather than his brain furnished for the last six weeks; he was going to say more, but he saw the colonel's quaint foxy eye peering at him, remembered St. Francis de Sales, and held his tongue.

But, as her destiny was, Argemone found herself, in the course of the evening, alone with Lancelot, at the open window. It was a still, hot, heavy night, after long easterly drought; sheet-lightning glimmered on the far horizon over the dark woodlands; the coming shower had sent forward as his herald a whispering draught of fragrant air.

'What a delicious shiver is creeping over those limes!' said Lancelot, half to himself.

The expression struck Argemone: it was the right one, and it seemed to open vistas of feeling and observation in the speaker which she had not suspected. There was a rich melancholy in the voice;—she turned to look at him.

'Ay,' he went on; 'and the same heat which crisps those thirsty leaves must breed the thunder-shower which cools them! But so it is throughout the universe every yearning proves the existence of an object meant to satisfy it; the same law creates both the giver and the receiver, the longing and its home.'

'If one could but know sometimes what it is for which one is longing!' said Argemone, without knowing that she was speaking from her inmost heart: but thus does the soul involuntarily lay bare its most