unsurprised, so unremonstrating, so uncriticizing, which had at the time
missed its message. It did not miss now. She saw herself accepted, Tommy
accepted, their friends accepted; all the things they did, their ways of
life, taken easily, without surprise, with scorn lurking behind the
screen. Their unpaid debts, and eluded duns; their disreputable haunts,
their more disreputable friends, their street-loafing, their very
dress.... Even at the outset Tommy had said: 'We don't dress well
enough. I want a new hat; so do you.' So that obvious discrimination
between 'sorts of people' their elementary perceptions had made at once;
they had reached just up to that, and no higher.

The question of discrimination brought the quick question, What share of
the gift had the Venables? For there were discriminations that might be
made, between the things that the Crevequers had done, and other things
that they had not done--things from which they had been kept, perhaps,
less by any code, moral or conventional, than by the inherent force of
inherited tendency, which, strike what new and individual roads we will,
will not cease to follow us along them. The question of the
discriminating powers of the Venables Betty left. She simply did not
know.

All the time, while the search-light glared over the things that Warren
had said and done, there remained, outlined lucidly against the
background, the things that Prudence Varley had not said and not done.
She, with her tacit omissions, was the influence almost preponderating.
Her atmosphere was the most deeply absorbed--the rarefied atmosphere of
the studio. Across the gulf of months Betty met the direct, far-seeing
look, which took in all and gave out nothing. It had waited for its
interpretation till now.

With the interpretation--which was that of things held back,
reserved--Betty came to evolve a discrimination. The discrimination was
between two attitudes. Both had held back something; neither had given
unreservedly. One had held back all of friendship, offering nothing; the
other had given friendship, withholding from it an element--the element
of respect.

Retrospect made the most of both. It would have been hard to say which
it found the more effectual weapon. There were moments when Betty could
have caught at the sharp blade of one to escape the other, each was
driven in alternately. Finally, in spite of all which she would have
during these months foregone had she been taken at