ast in their full harmony and their venerable
splendour, but the tribute of appreciation and decision was, while the
spectator considered, simplified to a point that but just failed of
representing levity on the part of a man who had always acknowledged
without shame, in such affairs, the intrinsic charm of what was called
discussion. The infinitely ancient, the immemorial amethystine blue of
the glaze, scarcely more meant to be breathed upon, it would seem, than
the cheek of royalty--this property of the ordered and matched array
had inevitably all its determination for him, but his submission was,
perhaps for the first time in his life, of the quick mind alone, the
process really itself, in its way, as fine as the perfection perceived
and admired: every inch of the rest of him being given to the
foreknowledge that an hour or two later he should have "spoken." The
burning of his ships therefore waited too near to let him handle his
opportunity with his usual firm and sentient fingers--waited somehow in
the predominance of Charlotte's very person, in her being there exactly
as she was, capable, as Mr. Gutermann-Seuss himself was capable, of the
right felicity of silence, but with an embracing ease, through it all,
that made deferred criticism as fragrant as some joy promised a lover by
his mistress, or as a big bridal bouquet held patiently behind her.
He couldn't otherwise have explained, surely, why he found himself
thinking, to his enjoyment, of so many other matters than the felicity
of his acquisition and the figure of his cheque, quite equally high; any
more than why, later on, with their return to the room in which they had
been received and the renewed encompassment of the tribe, he felt quite
merged in the elated circle formed by the girl's free response to the
collective caress of all the shining eyes, and by her genial acceptance
of the heavy cake and port wine that, as she was afterwards to note,
added to their transaction, for a finish, the touch of some mystic rite
of old Jewry.

This characterisation came from her as they walked away--walked
together, in the waning afternoon, back to the breezy sea and the
bustling front, back to the nimble and the flutter and the shining shops
that sharpened the grin of solicitation on the mask of night. They were
walking thus, as he felt, nearer and nearer to where he should see his
ships burn, and it was meanwhile for him quite as if this red glow would
impart, at the