strain was for the moment a continuance of
Gwendolen's pleading--a painful urging of something vague and
difficult, irreconcilable with pressing conditions, and yet cruel to
resist. However strange the mixture in her of a resolute pride and a
precocious air of knowing the world, with a precipitate, guileless
indiscretion, he was quite sure now that the mixture existed. Sir
Hugo's hints had made him alive to dangers that his own disposition
might have neglected; but that Gwendolen's reliance on him was
unvisited by any dream of his being a man who could misinterpret her
was as manifest as morning, and made an appeal which wrestled with his
sense of present dangers, and with his foreboding of a growing
incompatible claim on him in her mind. There was a foreshadowing of
some painful collision: on the one side the grasp of Mordecai's dying
hand on him, with all the ideals and prospects it aroused; on the other
the fair creature in silk and gems, with her hidden wound and her
self-dread, making a trustful effort to lean and find herself
sustained. It was as if he had a vision of himself besought with
outstretched arms and cries, while he was caught by the waves and
compelled to mount the vessel bound for a far-off coast. That was the
strain of excited feeling in him that went along with the notes of
Mirah's song; but when it ceased he moved from his seat with the
reflection that he had been falling into an exaggeration of his own
importance, and a ridiculous readiness to accept Gwendolen's view of
himself, as if he could really have any decisive power over her.

"What an enviable fellow you are," said Hans to him, "sitting on a sofa
with that young duchess, and having an interesting quarrel with her!"

"Quarrel with her?" repeated Deronda, rather uncomfortably.

"Oh, about theology, of course; nothing personal. But she told you what
you ought to think, and then left you with a grand air which was
admirable. Is she an Antinomian--if so, tell her I am an Antinomian
painter, and introduce me. I should like to paint her and her husband.
He has the sort of handsome _physique_ that the Duke ought to have in
_Lucrezia Borgia_--if it could go with a fine baritone, which it can't."

Deronda devoutly hoped that Hans's account of the impression his
dialogue with Gwendolen had made on a distant beholder was no more than
a bit of fantastic representation, such as was common with him.

And Gwendolen was not without her after-thoughts