ce before him, the
strong nostril with the lower cheek, became the very key to his first
idea of Newton's capture of refinement. He had shaved and was happily
transfigured. Phil Bloodgood had shaved and been wellnigh lost; though
why should he just now too precipitately drag the reminiscence in?

That question too, at the queer touch of association, played up for Mark
even under so much proof that the state of his own soul was being with
the lapse of every instant registered. Phil Bloodgood had brought about
the state of his soul--there was accordingly that amount of connection;
only it became further remarkable that from the moment his companion had
sounded him, and sounded him, he knew, down to the last truth of things,
his disposition, his necessity to talk, the desire that had in the
morning broken the spell of his confinement, the impulse that had thrown
him so defeatedly into Mrs. Folliott's arms and into Florence Ash's,
these forces seemed to feel their impatience ebb and their discretion
suddenly grow. His companion was talking again, but just then,
incongruously, made his need to communicate lose itself. It was as if
his personal case had already been touched by some tender hand--and
that, after all, was the modest limit of its greed. "I know now why
you came back--did Lottie mention how I had wondered? But sit down, sit
down--only let me, nervous beast as I am, take it standing!--and believe
me when I tell you that I've now ceased to wonder. My dear chap, I
_have_ it! It can't but have been for poor Phil Blood-good. He sticks
out of you, the brute--as how, with what he has done to you, shouldn't
he? There was a man to see me yesterday--Tim Slater, whom I don't think
you know, but who's 'on' everything within about two minutes of its
happening (I never saw such a fellow!) and who confirmed my supposition,
all my own, however, mind you, at first, that you're one of the
sufferers. So how the devil can you _not_ feel knocked? Why _should_
you look as if you were having the time of your life? What a hog to
have played it on _you_, on _you_, of all his friends!" So Newton Winch
continued, and so the air between the two men might have been, for a
momentary watcher--which is indeed what I can but invite the reader to
become--that of a nervously displayed, but all considerate, as well as
most acute, curiosity on the one side, and that on the other, after a
little, of an eventually fascinated acceptance of so much free a