knew the extent of her tenderness for him till she
became conscious of the present force of her desire that he should be
superior, be perhaps even sublime. She obscurely made out that
superiority, that sublimity, mightn't after all be fatal. She closed her
eyes and lived for a day or two in the mere beauty of confidence. It was
with her on the short journey; it was with her at Maggie's; it glorified
the mean little house in the stupid little town. Owen had grown larger
to her: he would do, like a man, whatever he should have to do. He
wouldn't be weak--not as she was: she herself was weak exceedingly.

Arranging her few possessions in Maggie's fewer receptacles, she caught
a glimpse of the bright side of the fact that her old things were not
such a problem as Mrs. Gereth's. Picking her way with Maggie through the
local puddles, diving with her into smelly cottages and supporting her,
at smellier shops, in firmness over the weight of joints and the taste
of cheese, it was still her own secret that was universally inter-woven
In the puddles, the cottages, the shops she was comfortably alone with
it; that comfort prevailed even while, at the evening meal, her
brother-in-law invited her attention to a diagram, drawn with a fork on
too soiled a tablecloth, of the scandalous drains of the Convalescent
Home. To be alone with it she had come away from Ricks; and now she knew
that to be alone with it she had come away from London. This advantage
was of course menaced, but not immediately destroyed, by the arrival, on
the second day, of the note she had been sure she should receive from
Owen. He had gone to West Kensington and found her flown, but he had got
her address from the little maid and then hurried to a club and written
to her. "Why have you left me just when I want you most?" he demanded.
The next words, it was true, were more reassuring on the question of his
steadiness. "I don't know what your reason may be," they went on, "nor
why you've not left a line for me; but I don't think you can feel that I
did anything yesterday that it wasn't right for me to do. As regards
Mrs. Brigstock, certainly, I just felt what was right and I did it. She
had no business whatever to attack you that way, and I should have been
ashamed if I had left her there to worry you. I won't have you worried
by any one; no one shall be disagreeable to you but me. I didn't mean to
be so yesterday, and I don't to-day; but I'm perfectly free now to wan