isfortune. Neither of us
would name it more than we were doing then, and Flora would never name it
at all. Little by little I saw that what had occurred was, strange as it
might appear, the best thing for her happiness. The question was now
only of her beauty and her being seen and marvelled at; with Dawling to
do for her everything in life her activity was limited to that. Such an
activity was all within her scope; it asked nothing of her that she
couldn't splendidly give. As from time to time in our delicate communion
she turned her face to me with the parody of a look I lost none of the
signs of its strange new glory. The expression of the eyes was a rub of
pastel from a master's thumb; the whole head, stamped with a sort of
showy suffering, had gained a fineness from what she had passed through.
Yes, Flora was settled for life--nothing could hurt her further. I
foresaw the particular praise she would mostly incur--she would be
invariably "interesting." She would charm with her pathos more even than
she had charmed with her pleasure. For herself above all she was fixed
for ever, rescued from all change and ransomed from all doubt. Her old
certainties, her old vanities were justified and sanctified, and in the
darkness that had closed upon her one object remained clear. That
object, as unfading as a mosaic mask, was fortunately the loveliest she
could possibly look upon. The greatest blessing of all was of course
that Dawling thought so. Her future was ruled with the straightest line,
and so for that matter was his. There were two facts to which before I
left my friends I gave time to sink into my spirit. One was that he had
changed by some process as effective as Flora's change, had been
simplified somehow into service as she had been simplified into success.
He was such a picture of inspired intervention as I had never yet
conceived: he would exist henceforth for the sole purpose of rendering
unnecessary, or rather impossible, any reference even on her own part to
his wife's infirmity. Oh yes, how little desire he would ever give _me_
to refer to it! He principally after a while made me feel--and this was
my second lesson--that, good-natured as he was, my being there to see it
all oppressed him; so that by the time the act ended I recognised that I
too had filled out my hour. Dawling remembered things; I think he caught
in my very face the irony of old judgments: they made him thresh about in
his cha