excitement
of her town life was like the hurry and constant change of foreign
travel; whatever might be the inward despondency, there was a programme
to be fulfilled, not without gratification to many-sided self. But, as
always happens with a deep interest, the comparatively rare occasions
on which she could exchange any words with Deronda had a diffusive
effect in her consciousness, magnifying their communication with each
other, and therefore enlarging the place she imagined it to have in his
mind. How could Deronda help this? He certainly did not avoid her;
rather he wished to convince her by every delicate indirect means that
her confidence in him had not been indiscreet since it had not lowered
his respect. Moreover he liked being near her--how could it be
otherwise? She was something more than a problem: she was a lovely
woman, for the turn of whose mind and fate he had a care which, however
futile it might be, kept soliciting him as a responsibility, perhaps
all the more that, when he dared to think of his own future, he saw it
lying far away from this splendid sad-hearted creature, who, because he
had once been impelled to arrest her attention momentarily, as he might
have seized her arm with warning to hinder her from stepping where
there was danger, had turned to him with a beseeching persistent need.

One instance in which Grandcourt stimulated a feeling in Gwendolen that
he would have liked to suppress without seeming to care about it, had
relation to Mirah. Gwendolen's inclination lingered over the project of
the singing lessons as a sort of obedience to Deronda's advice, but day
followed day with that want of perceived leisure which belongs to lives
where there is no work to mark off intervals; and the continual
liability to Grandcourt's presence and surveillance seemed to flatten
every effort to the level of the boredom which his manner expressed;
his negative mind was as diffusive as fog, clinging to all objects, and
spoiling all contact.

But one morning when they were breakfasting, Gwendolen, in a recurrent
fit of determination to exercise the old spirit, said, dallying
prettily over her prawns without eating them--

"I think of making myself accomplished while we are in town, and having
singing lessons."

"Why?" said Grandcourt, languidly.

"Why?" echoed Gwendolen, playing at sauciness; "because I can't eat
_pate de foie gras_ to make me sleepy, and I can't smoke, and I can't
go to the club to m