The Meeting on the Hill
- Oh, the things we tell ourselves for love. Dinah, apparently, is long gone, but Adam feels "hope rather than discouragement" (54.1). As Adam imagines it, Dinah is wrestling with her feelings. She's in doubt, but she'll come around.
- Or will she? The more Dinah stays away, the more anxious Adam gets. He even stays up "late one night to write her a letter, but the next morning he burnt it" (54.3). He considers going to Snowfield.
- All this waiting, suffering, and reflection has given Adam a "sense of enlarged being" (54.9). And no, surprisingly, that's not euphemistic.
- He sets out for Snowfield one morning and finds himself on a hill overlooking the town by late afternoon. He finds the local inn, gets dinner, and heads right back up that hill. Here he'll wait for Dinah, among "the still lights and shadows and the great embracing sky" (54.11).
- And sure enough, Dinah soon comes down the road, fresh from another day of preaching. Adam calls her name. She catches sight of him, and her look is "a look of yearning love" (554.54).
- Now how can this turn out badly? Is it possible—in any way possible—that Dinah will turn away, that Adam will leave lonely and broken-hearted? Just keep reading, because Dinah is the first to speak. Now she declares that "our hearts are filled with the same love," which means… (54.17).
- Which means that the waiting is over, the reservations are over, Dinah has agreed to marry Adam!
- Our two lovebirds kiss, and Eliot's narrator declares what a great thing it is for two people "to feel that they are joined for life" (54.20). Aw, shucks.