I went from one room to the other, but to find only, at first, as on my previous circuit, a desert on which the sun had still not set.Mrs.
Brissenden was nowhere, but the whole place waited as we had left it, with seats displaced and flowers dispetalled, a fan forgotten on a table, a book laid down upon a chair.It came over me as I looked about that if she HAD "squared" the household, so large an order, as they said, was a sign sufficient of what I was to have from her.I had quite rather it were her doing--not mine; but it showed with eloquence that she had after all judged some effort or other to be worth her while.Her renewed delay moreover added to my impatience of mind in respect to the nature of this effort by striking me as already part of it.What, I asked myself, could be so much worth her while as to have to be paid for by so much apparent reluctance?
But at last I saw her through a vista of open doors, and as I forthwith went to her--she took no step to meet me--I was doubtless impressed afresh with the "pull" that in social intercourse a woman always has.She was able to assume on the spot by mere attitude and air the appearance of having been ready and therefore inconvenienced.Oh, I saw soon enough that she was ready and that one of the forms of her readiness would be precisely to offer herself as having acted entirely to oblige me--to give me, as a sequel to what had already passed between us, the opportunity for which she had assured me I should thank her before I had done with her.Yet, as I felt sure, at the same time, that she had taken a line, I was curious as to how, in her interest, our situation could be worked.What it had originally left us with was her knowing I was wrong.I had promised her, on my honour, to be candid, but even if I were disposed to cease to contest her identification of Mrs.Server I was scarce to be looked to for such an exhibition of gratitude as might be held to repay her for staying so long out of bed.There were in short elements in the business that I couldn't quite clearly see handled as favours to me.Her dress gave, with felicity, no sign whatever of preparation for the night, and if, since our last words, she had stood with any anxiety whatever before her glass, it had not been to remove a jewel or to alter the place of a flower.She was as much under arms as she had been on descending to dinner--as fresh in her array as if that banquet were still to come.She met me in fact as admirably--that was the truth that covered every other--as if she had been able to guess the most particular curiosity with which, from my end of the series of rooms, I advanced upon her.
A part of the mixture of my thoughts during these seconds had been the possibility--absurd, preposterous though it looks when phrased here--of some change in her person that would correspond, for me to the other changes I had had such keen moments of flattering myself I had made out.I had just had them over in the smoking-room, some of these differences, and then had had time to ask myself if I were not now to be treated to the vision of the greatest, the most wonderful, of all.I had already, on facing her, after my last moments with Lady John, seen difference peep out at me, and I had seen the impression of it confirmed by what had afterwards happened.It had been in her way of turning from me after that brief passage;it had been in her going up to bed without seeing me again; it had been once more in her thinking, for reasons of her own, better of that; and it had been most of all in her sending her husband down to me.Well, wouldn't it finally be, still more than most of all--? But I scarce had known, at this point, what grossness or what fineness of material correspondence to forecast.I only had waited there with these general symptoms so present that almost any further development of them occurred to me as conceivable.
So much as this was true, but I was after a moment to become aware of something by which I was as strongly affected as if I had been quite unprepared.
Yes, literally, that final note, in the smoking-room, the note struck in Obert's ejaculation on poor Briss's hundred years, had failed to achieve for me a worthy implication.I was forced, after looking at Grace Brissenden a minute, to recognise that my imagination had not risen to its opportunity.
The full impression took a minute--a minute during which she said nothing;then it left me deeply and above all, as I felt, discernibly conscious of the prodigious thing, the thing, I had not thought of.This it was that gave her such a beautiful chance not to speak: she was so quite sufficiently occupied with seeing what I hadn't thought of, and with seeing me, to make up for lost time, breathlessly think of it while she watched me.
All I had at first taken in was, as I say, her untouched splendour;I don't know why that should have impressed me--as if it had been probable she would have appeared in her dressing-gown; it was the only thing to have expected.And it in fact plumed and enhanced her assurance, sustained her propriety, lent our belated interview the natural and casual note.
But there was another service it still more rendered her: it so covered, at the first blush, the real message of her aspect, that she enjoyed the luxury--and I felt her enjoy it--of seeing my perception in arrest.Amazing, when I think of it, the number of things that occurred in these stayed seconds of our silence; but they are perhaps best represented by the two most marked intensities of my own sensation: the first the certitude that she had at no moment since her marriage so triumphantly asserted her defeat of time, and the second the conviction that I, losing with her while, as it were, we closed, a certain advantage I should never recover, had at no moment since the day before made so poor a figure on my own ground.
