d more companionable. Perhaps
because imaginations have a way of following the line of least
resistance, it took upon itself something of the form, something of the
voice and bearing of Mr. Brumley. She recoiled from her own thoughts
when she discovered herself wondering what manner of lover Mr. Brumley
might make--if suddenly she lowered her defences, freed his suffocating
pleading, took him to herself.

In my anxiety to draw Mr. Brumley as he was, I have perhaps a little
neglected to show him as Lady Harman saw him. We have employed the
inconsiderate verisimilitude of a novelist repudiating romance in his
portrayal; towards her he kept a better face. He was at least a very
honest lover and there was little disingenuousness in the flow of fine
mental attitudes that met her; the thought and presence of her made him
fine; as soon could he have turned his shady side towards the sun. And
she was very ready and eager to credit him with generous qualities. We
of his club and circle, a little assisted perhaps by Max Beerbohm's
diabolical index finger, may have found and been not unwilling to find
his face chiefly expressive of a kind of empty alertness; but when it
was turned to her its quite pleasantly modelled features glowed and it
was transfigured. So far as she was concerned, with Sir Isaac as foil,
he was real enough and good enough for her. And by the virtue of that
unlovely contrast even a certain ineffectiveness--became infinite
delicacy....

The thought of Mr. Brumley in that relation and to that extent of
clearness came but rarely into her consciousness, and when it did it was
almost immediately dismissed again. It was the most fugitive of
proffered consolations. And it is to be remarked that it made its most
successful apparitions when Mr. Brumley was far away, and by some weeks
or months of separation a little blurred and forgotten....

And sometimes this unrest of her spirit, this unhappiness turned her in
quite another direction as it seemed and she had thoughts of religion.
With a deepened shame she would go seeking into that other, that greater
indelicacy, from which her upbringing had divorced her mind. She would
even secretly pray. Greatly daring she fled on several occasions from
her visitation of the hostels or slipped out of her home, and evading
Mr. Brumley, went once to the Brompton Oratory, once or twice to the
Westminster Cathedral and then having discovered Saint Paul's, to Saint
Paul's in search