--and yet not likely. The power of tyranny in him seemed a power of
living in the presence of any wish that he should die. The thought that
his death was the only possible deliverance for her was one with the
thought that deliverance would never come--the double deliverance from
the injury with which other beings might reproach her and from the yoke
she had brought on her own neck. No! she foresaw him always living, and
her own life dominated by him; the "always" of her young experience not
stretching beyond the few immediate years that seemed immeasurably long
with her passionate weariness. The thought of his dying would not
subsist: it turned as with a dream-change into the terror that she
should die with his throttling fingers on her neck avenging that
thought. Fantasies moved within her like ghosts, making no break in her
more acknowledged consciousness and finding no obstruction in it: dark
rays doing their work invisibly in the broad light.

Only an evening or two after that encounter in the Park, there was a
grand concert at Klesmer's, who was living rather magnificently now in
one of the large houses in Grosvenor Place, a patron and prince among
musical professors. Gwendolen had looked forward to this occasion as
one on which she was sure to meet Deronda, and she had been meditating
how to put a question to him which, without containing a word that she
would feel a dislike to utter, would yet be explicit enough for him to
understand it. The struggle of opposite feelings would not let her
abide by her instinct that the very idea of Deronda's relation to her
was a discouragement to any desperate step towards freedom. The next
wave of emotion was a longing for some word of his to enforce a
resolve. The fact that her opportunities of conversation with him had
always to be snatched in the doubtful privacy of large parties, caused
her to live through them many times beforehand, imagining how they
would take place and what she would say. The irritation was
proportionate when no opportunity came; and this evening at Klesmer's
she included Deronda in her anger, because he looked as calm as
possible at a distance from her, while she was in danger of betraying
her impatience to every one who spoke to her. She found her only safety
in a chill haughtiness which made Mr. Vandernoodt remark that Mrs.
Grandcourt was becoming a perfect match for her husband. When at last
the chances of the evening brought Deronda near her, Sir Hu