Yet, after all, as a friend and companion, I hope never to become quite distasteful to my dear master." "Distasteful! and like you again! I think I shall like you again, and yet again: and I will make you confess I do not only _like_, but _love_ you--with truth, fervour, constancy." "Yet are you not capricious, sir ?" "To women who please me only by their faces, I am the very devil when I find out they have neither souls nor hearts--when they open to me a perspective of flatness, triviality, and perhaps imbecility, coarseness, and ill-temper: but to the clear eye and eloquent tongue, to the soul made of fire, and the character that bends but does not break--at once supple and stable, tractable and consistent--I am ever tender and true." "Had you ever experience of such a character, sir?
Did you ever love such an one ?" "I love it now." "But before me: if I, indeed, in any respect come up to your difficult standard ?" "I never met your likeness.

Jane, you please me, and you master me--you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart.

I am influenced--conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph I can win.

Why do you smile, Jane?
What does that inexplicable, that uncanny turn of countenance mean ?" "I was thinking, sir (you will excuse the idea; it was involuntary), I was thinking of Hercules and Samson with their charmers--" "You were, you little elfish--" "Hush, sir! You don't talk very wisely just now; any more than those gentlemen acted very wisely.

However, had they been married, they would no doubt by their severity as husbands have made up for their softness as suitors; and so will you, I fear.