“How could you begin?” said she. “I can comprehend your going on charmingly, when you had once made a beginning, but what could set you off in the first place?”

It was a time for honesty between them, so he told her,“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” He laced his fingers through hers.

“My beauty you had early withstood.” She teased him by running her hand up his jacket’s sleeve, and Darcy could think of nothing but the natural ease of her touch. “And as for my manners,” Elizabeth continued, “my behavior to you was at least bordering on the uncivil, and I never spoke to you without rather wishing to give you pain than not. Now, be sincere, did you admire me for my impertinence?”

“For the liveliness of your mind, I did,” he said diplomatically. He did not—could not—admit to her his dreams of making love to her.

“You may as well call it impertinence at once; it was very little less.” In retrospect, Darcy silently agreed. He often found himself lost in his fantasies of her; so much so that he did not recognize Elizabeth’s challenge as impertinence, but more of flirtation.“The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention.You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused and interested you because I was so unlike them.You thoroughly despised the persons who so assiduously courted you.” Startled by this revelation, Darcy had to admit that Elizabeth was correct. She caught his attention because she was his complete opposite, although she perfectly complemented his nature.With her, he had become freer. And he had come to think less poorly of the world.