d of a minute to matter
comparatively little by which of us, after all, she was first
designated. There is perhaps an oddity--which I must set down to my
emotion of the moment--in my not now being able to say. I should have
been hugely startled if the sight of Gilbert Long had appeared to make
my companion suddenly think of her; and reminiscence of that shock is
not one of those I have found myself storing up. What does abide with me
is the memory of how, after a little, my apprehensions, of various
kinds, dropped--most of all under the deepening conviction that Lady
John was not a whit less agreeably superficial than I could even at the
worst have desired. The point established for me was that, whereas she
passed with herself and so many others as taking in everything, she had
taken in nothing whatever that it was to my purpose she should not take.
Vast, truly, was the world of observation, that we could both glean in
it so actively without crossing each other's steps. There we stood close
together, yet--save for the accident of a final dash, as I shall
note--were at opposite ends of the field.

It's a matter as to which the truth sounds priggish, but I can't help it
if--yes, positively--it affected me as hopelessly vulgar to have made
any induction at all about our companions _but_ those I have recorded,
in such detail, on behalf of my own energy. It was better verily not to
have touched them--which was the case of everyone else--than to have
taken them up, with knowing gestures, only to do so little with them.
That I felt the interest of May Server, that May Server felt the
interest of poor Briss, and that my feeling incongruously presented
itself as putting up, philosophically, with the inconvenience of the
lady's--these were, in fine, circumstances to which she clearly attached
ideas too commonplace for me to judge it useful to gather them in. She
read all things, Lady John, heaven knows, in the light of the universal
possibility of a "relation"; but most of the relations that she had up
her sleeve could thrust themselves into my theory only to find
themselves, the next minute, eliminated. They were of alien
substance--insoluble in the whole. Gilbert Long had for her no
connection, in my deeper sense, with Mrs. Server, nor Mrs. Server with
Gilbert Long, nor the husband with the wife, nor the wife with the
husband, nor I with either member of either pair, nor anyone with
anything, nor anything with anyone. She was t