Browny, urging him to take his own, to snatch her from a possessor who
forfeited by undervaluing her. This was the truth in a better-ordered
world: she belonged to the man who could help her to grow and to do her
work. But in the world we have around us, it was the distorted truth:
and keeping passion down, he was able to wish her such happiness as
pertained to safety from shipwreck, and for himself, that he might
continue to walk in the ranks of the sober citizens.

Oh, true and right, but she was gloriously beautiful! Day by day she
surpassed the wondrous Browny of old days. All women were eclipsed by
her. She was that fire in the night which lights the night and draws the
night to look at it. And more: this queen of women was beginning to have
a mind at work. One saw already the sprouting of a mind repressed. She
had a distinct ability; the good ambition to use her qualities. She
needed life and air--that is, comprehension of her, encouragement, the
companion mate. With what strength would she now endow him! The pride
in the sharp imagination of possessing her whispered a boast of the
strength her mate would have from her. His need and her need rushed
together somewhere down the skies. They could not, he argued, be
separated eternally.

He had to leave her. Selina, shocked at a boldness she could not
understand in herself, begged him to stay and tell her of Switzerland
and Alpine flowers and herbs, and the valleys for the gold beetle and
the Apollo butterfly. Aminta hinted that Lord Ormont might expect to
find him there, if he came the next morning; but she would not try to
persuade, and left the decision with him, loving him for the pain he
inflicted by going.

Why, indeed, should he stay? Both could ask; they were one in asking.