er side, for the major advantage--what settled it
was this very fact that what she liked she liked so terribly. If it were
simply to "use" him, as she had said the last time, and no matter to
the profit of which of them she called it, one might let it go for that;
since it could make her wait over, day after day, in that fashion, and
with such a spending of money, on the hazard of their meeting again. How
could she be the least sure he would ever again consent to it after the
proved action on him, a week ago, of her last monstrous honesty? It was
indeed positively as if he were now himself putting this influence--and
for their common edification--to the supreme, to the finest test. He had
a sublime, an ideal flight, which lasted about a minute. "Suppose, now
that I see her there and what she has taken so characteristically for
granted, suppose I just show her that she _hasn't_ only confidently to
wait or whistle for me, and that the length of my leash is greater
than she measures, and that everything's impossible always?--show it by
turning my back on her now and walking straight away. She won't be able
not to understand _that!_"

Nothing had passed, across their distance, but the mute apprehension
of each on the part of each; the whole expanse, at the church hour, was
void of other life (he had scarce met a creature on his way from end
to end), and the sun-seasoned gusts kept brushing the air and all the
larger prospect clean. It was through this beautiful lucidity that
he watched her watch him, as it were--watch him for what he would do.
Neither moved at this high tension; Kate Cookham, her face fixed on
him, only waited with a stiff appearance of leaving him, not for dignity
but--to an effect of even deeper perversity--for kindness, free to
choose. It yet somehow affected him at present, this attitude, as a gage
of her _knowing too_--knowing, that is, that he wasn't really free, that
this was the thinnest of vain parades, the poorest of hollow heroics,
that his need, his solitude, his suffered wrong, his exhausted rancour,
his foredoomed submission to any shown interest, all hung together too
heavy on him to let the weak wings of his pride do more than vaguely
tremble. They couldn't, they didn't carry him a single beat further
away; according to which he stood rooted, neither retreating nor
advancing, but presently correcting his own share of the bleak exchange
by looking off at the sea. Deeply conscious of the awkwar