t of time, and the second the conviction
that I, losing with her while, as it were, we closed, a certain
advantage I should never recover, had at no moment since the day before
made so poor a figure on my own ground. Ah, it may have been only for
six seconds that she caught me gaping at her renewed beauty; but six
seconds, it was inevitable to feel, were quite enough for every purpose
with which she had come down to me. She might have been a large, fair,
rich, prosperous person of twenty-five; she was at any rate near enough
to it to put me for ever in my place. It was a success, on her part,
that, though I couldn't as yet fully measure it, there could be no doubt
of whatever, any more than of my somehow paying for it. Her being there
at all, at such an hour, in such conditions, became, each moment, on the
whole business, more and more a part of her advantage; the case for her
was really in almost any aspect she could now make it wear to my
imagination. My wealth of that faculty, never so stimulated, was thus,
in a manner, her strength; by which I mean the impossibility of my
indifference to the mere immense suggestiveness of our circumstances.
How can I tell now to what tune the sense of all these played into my
mind?--the huge oddity of the nameless idea on which we foregathered,
the absence and hush of everything except that idea, so magnified in
consequence and yet still, after all, altogether fantastic. There
remained for her, there spoke for her too, her vividly "unconventional"
step, the bravery of her rustling, on an understanding so difficult to
give an account of, through places and times only made safe by the sleep
of the unsuspecting. My imagination, in short, since I have spoken of
it, couldn't do other than work for her from the moment she had, so
simply yet so wonderfully, not failed me. Therefore it was all with me
again, the vision of her reasons. They were in fact sufficiently in the
sound of what she presently said. "Perhaps you don't know--but I
mentioned in the proper quarter that I should sit up a little. They're
of a kindness here, luckily----! So it's all right." It was all right,
obviously--she made it so; but she made it so as well that, in spite of
the splendour she showed me, she should be a little nervous. "We shall
only take moreover," she added, "a minute."

I should perhaps have wondered more what she proposed to do in a minute
had I not felt it as already more or less done. Yes, she might