Aldous's heart leapt to the spur of a sudden resolve.
Instinctively she turned to him at the same moment as he to her, and seeing his look she paled a little.
"Do you guess at all why it hurts me to jar with you ?" he said--finding his words in a rush, he did not know how--"Why every syllable of yours matters to me?
It is because I have hopes--dreams--which have become my life! If you could accept this--this--feeling--this devotion--which has grown up in me--if you could trust yourself to me--you should have no cause, I think--ever--to think me hard or narrow towards any person, any enthusiasm for which you had sympathy.

May I say to you all that is in my mind--or--or--am I presuming ?" She looked away from him, crimson again.

A great wave of exultation--boundless, intoxicating--swept through her.

Then it was checked by a nobler feeling--a quick, penitent sense of his nobleness.
"You don't know me," she said hurriedly: "you think you do.

But I am all odds and ends.