e
no longer joined us as we sat or walked together, I perceived that his
hostility was fixed and his parti pris. He was brimful of compassion,
but it was all for Cecily, none for the situation or for me. (She would
have marvelled, placidly, why he pitied her. I am glad I can say that.)
The primitive man in him rose up as Pope of nature and excommunicated
me as a creature recusant to her functions. Then deliberately Dacres
undertook an office of consolation; and I fell to wondering, while
Mrs. Morgan spoke her convictions plainly out, how far an impulse of
reparation for a misfortune with which he had nothing to do might carry
a man.

I began to watch the affair with an interest which even to me seemed
queer. It was not detached, but it was semi-detached, and, of course,
on the side for which I seem, in this history, to be perpetually
apologizing. With certain limitations it didn't matter an atom whom
Cecily married. So that he was sound and decent, with reasonable
prospects, her simple requirements and ours for her would be quite met.
There was the ghost of a consolation in that; one needn't be anxious or
exacting.

I could predict with a certain amount of confidence that in her first
season she would probably receive three or four proposals, any one of
which she might accept with as much propriety and satisfaction as any
other one. For Cecily it was so simple; prearranged by nature like her
digestion, one could not see any logical basis for difficulties. A nice
upstanding sapper, a dashing Bengal Lancer--oh, I could think of half
a dozen types that would answer excellently. She was the kind of young
person, and that was the summing up of it, to marry a type and be
typically happy. I hoped and expected that she would. But Dacres!

Dacres should exercise the greatest possible discretion. He was not
a person who could throw the dice indifferently with fate. He could
respond to so much, and he would inevitably, sooner or later, demand so
much response! He was governed by a preposterously exacting temperament,
and he wore his nerves outside. And what vision he had! How he explored
the world he lived in and drew out of it all there was, all there was!
I could see him in the years to come ranging alone the fields that were
sweet and the horizons that lifted for him, and ever returning to pace
the common dusty mortal road by the side of a purblind wife. On general
principles, as a case to point at, it would be a conspicuous