She had sacrificed a parent, the pearl of parents, no older than herself: it wouldn't so much have mattered if he had been of common parental age.

That he wasn't, that he was just her extraordinary equal and contemporary, this was what added to her act the long train of its effect.

Light broke for him at last, indeed, quite as a consequence of the fear of breathing a chill upon this luxuriance of her spiritual garden.

As at a turn of his labyrinth he saw his issue, which opened out so wide, for the minute, that he held his breath with wonder.

He was afterwards to recall how, just then, the autumn night seemed to clear to a view in which the whole place, everything round him, the wide terrace where he stood, the others, with their steps, below, the gardens, the park, the lake, the circling woods, lay there as under some strange midnight sun.