esemblances to a great white curtain. He had
never known curtains but as purple even to blackness--but as producing
where they hung a darkness intended and ominous. When they were so
disposed as to shelter surprises the surprises were apt to be shocks.

Shocks, however, from these quite different depths, were not what he saw
reason to apprehend; what he rather seemed to himself not yet to have
measured was something that, seeking a name for it, he would have called
the quantity of confidence reposed in him. He had stood still, at many
a moment of the previous month, with the thought, freshly determined or
renewed, of the general expectation--to define it roughly--of which he
was the subject. What was singular was that it seemed not so much
an expectation of anything in particular as a large, bland, blank
assumption of merits almost beyond notation, of essential quality and
value. It was as if he had been some old embossed coin, of a purity of
gold no longer used, stamped with glorious arms, mediaeval, wonderful,
of which the "worth" in mere modern change, sovereigns and half crowns,
would be great enough, but as to which, since there were finer ways of
using it, such taking to pieces was superfluous. That was the image for
the security in which it was open to him to rest; he was to constitute a
possession, yet was to escape being reduced to his component parts.
What would this mean but that, practically, he was never to be tried or
tested? What would it mean but that, if they didn't "change" him,
they really wouldn't know--he wouldn't know himself--how many pounds,
shillings and pence he had to give? These at any rate, for the present,
were unanswerable questions; all that was before him was that he was
invested with attributes. He was taken seriously. Lost there in the
white mist was the seriousness in them that made them so take him.
It was even in Mrs. Assingham, in spite of her having, as she had
frequently shown, a more mocking spirit. All he could say as yet was
that he had done nothing, so far as to break any charm. What should
he do if he were to ask her frankly this afternoon what was, morally
speaking, behind their veil. It would come to asking what they expected
him to do. She would answer him probably: "Oh, you know, it's what we
expect you to be!" on which he would have no resource but to deny his
knowledge. Would that break the spell, his saying he had no idea? What
idea in fact could he have? He also took