in default of other things, before they changed
their subject. It had the effect, for her, of a reminder--a reminder of
all he was, of all he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her
perfect little father, she might take him as representing, take him as
having, quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been capable
of, and as therefore wishing, not--was it?--illegitimately, to call
her attention to. The "successful," beneficent person, the beautiful,
bountiful, original, dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate
collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was--these
things struck her, on the spot, as making up for him, in a wonderful
way, a character she must take into account in dealing with him either
for pity or for envy. He positively, under the impression, seemed to
loom larger than life for her, so that she saw him during these moments
in a light of recognition which had had its brightness for her at many
an hour of the past, but which had never been so intense and so almost
admonitory. His very quietness was part of it now, as always part of
everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite
public perversity, his inscrutable, incalculable energy; and this
quality perhaps it might be--all the more too as the result, for the
present occasion, of an admirable, traceable effort--that placed him in
her eyes as no precious a work of art probably had ever been placed
in his own. There was a long moment, absolutely, during which her
impression rose and rose, even as that of the typical charmed gazer, in
the still museum, before the named and dated object, the pride of the
catalogue, that time has polished and consecrated. Extraordinary,
in particular, was the number of the different ways in which he thus
affected her as showing. He was strong--that was the great thing. He
was sure--sure for himself, always, whatever his idea: the expression
of that in him had somehow never appeared more identical with his proved
taste for the rare and the true. But what stood out beyond everything
was that he was always, marvellously, young--which couldn't but crown,
at this juncture, his whole appeal to her imagination. Before she knew
it she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simply a great
and deep and high little man, and that to love him with tenderness was
not to be distinguished, a whit, from loving him with pride. It came to
her, all strangely, as a sudden