vid to
me that, "composing" there beautifully, they could scarce help playing a
part in my exhibition. The mind of man, furthermore--and my
generalisation pressed hard, with a quick twist, on the supersubtlety as
to which I had just been privately complacent--the mind of man doubtless
didn't know from one minute to the other, under the appeal of
phantasmagoric life, what it would profitably be at. It had struck me a
few seconds before as vulgarly gross in Lady John that she was curious,
or conscious, of so small a part; in spite of which I was already
secretly wincing at the hint that these others had begun to find
themselves less in the dark and perhaps even directly to exchange their
glimmerings.

My personal privilege, on the basis of the full consciousness, had
become, on the spot, in the turn of an eye, more than questionable, and
I was really quite scared at the chance of having to face--of having to
see _them_ face--another recognition. What did this alarm imply but the
complete reversal of my estimate of the value of perception? Mrs.
Brissenden and Long had been hitherto magnificently without it, and I
was responsible perhaps for having, in a mood practically much stupider
than the stupidest of theirs, put them gratuitously and helplessly _on_
it. To be without it was the most consistent, the most successful,
because the most amiable, form of selfishness; and why should people
admirably equipped for remaining so, people bright and insolent in their
prior state, people in whom this state was to have been respected as a
surface without a scratch is respected, be made to begin to vibrate, to
crack and split, from within? Wasn't it enough for _me_ to pay,
vicariously, the tax on being absurd? Were we all to be landed, without
an issue or a remedy, in a condition on which that tax would be
generally levied? It was as if, abruptly, with a new emotion, I had
wished to unthink every thought with which I had been occupied for
twenty-four hours. Let me add, however, that even had this process been
manageable I was aware of not proposing to begin it till I should have
done with Lady John.

The time she took to meet my last remark is naturally not represented by
this prolonged glance of mine at the amount of suggestion that just then
happened to reach me from the other quarter. It at all events duly came
out between us that Mrs. Server was the person I did have on my mind;
and I remember that it had seemed to me at the en