She had lent herself,
given herself, utterly, and she ought to have known better if she didn't
mean to abide by it. At the end of three weeks she felt that her inquiry
was complete, but that after all nothing was gained except an immense
interest in Basil Ransom's views and the prospect of an eternal
heartache. He had told her he wanted her to know him, and now she knew
him pretty thoroughly. She knew him and she adored him, but it didn't
make any difference. To give him up or to give Olive up--this effort
would be the greater of the two.
If Basil Ransom had the advantage, as far back as that day in New York,
of having struck a note which was to reverberate, it may easily be
imagined that he did not fail to follow it up. If he had projected a new
light into Verena's mind, and made the idea of giving herself to a man
more agreeable to her than that of giving herself to a movement, he
found means to deepen this illumination, to drag her former standard in
the dust. He was in a very odd situation indeed, carrying on his siege
with his hands tied. As he had to do everything in an hour a day, he
perceived that he must confine himself to the essential. The essential
was to show her how much he loved her, and then to press, to press,
always to press. His hovering about Miss Chancellor's habitation without
going in was a strange regimen to be subjected to, and he was sorry not
to see more of Miss Birdseye, besides often not knowing what to do with
himself in the mornings and evenings.
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