" She took it,
however, as she spoke, and the gratification of having
her do so, of feeling such a connexion for the first time,
made him a little forgetful of Fanny. "You scarcely
touch me," said he. "You do not make me of any use.
What a difference in the weight of a woman's arm from
that of a man! At Oxford I have been a good deal used
to have a man lean on me for the length of a street,
and you are only a fly in the comparison."
"I am really not tired, which I almost wonder at;
for we must have walked at least a mile in this wood.
Do not you think we have?"
"Not half a mile," was his sturdy answer; for he was not yet
so much in love as to measure distance, or reckon time,
with feminine lawlessness.
"Oh! you do not consider how much we have wound about.
We have taken such a very serpentine course, and the wood
itself must be half a mile long in a straight line,
for we have never seen the end of it yet since we left
the first great path."
"But if you remember, before we left that first great path,
we saw directly to the end of it. We looked down the
whole vista, and saw it closed by iron gates, and it
could not have been more than a furlong in length.
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