ld conduct it was what she above all dreaded; she was so
far from sure that under that experience she mightn't drop into some
depth of weakness, mightn't show him some shortest way with her that he
would know how to use again. Therefore, since she had given him, as yet,
no moment's pretext for pretending to her that she had either lost faith
or suffered by a feather's weight in happiness, she left him, it was
easy to reason, with an immense advantage for all waiting and all
tension. She wished him, for the present, to "make up" to her for
nothing. Who could say to what making-up might lead, into what
consenting or pretending or destroying blindness it might plunge her?
She loved him too helplessly, still, to dare to open the door, by an
inch, to his treating her as if either of them had wronged the other.
Something or somebody--and who, at this, which of them all?--would
inevitably, would in the gust of momentary selfishness, be sacrificed
to that; whereas what she intelligently needed was to know where she was
going. Knowledge, knowledge, was a fascination as well as a fear; and
a part, precisely, of the strangeness of this juncture was the way her
apprehension that he would break out to her with some merely general
profession was mixed with her dire need to forgive him, to reassure him,
to respond to him, on no ground that she didn't fully measure. To do
these things it must be clear to her what they were FOR; but to act in
that light was, by the same effect, to learn, horribly, what the other
things had been. He might tell her only what he wanted, only what would
work upon her by the beauty of his appeal; and the result of the direct
appeal of ANY beauty in him would be her helpless submission to
his terms. All her temporary safety, her hand-to-mouth success,
accordingly, was in his neither perceiving nor divining this, thanks to
such means as she could take to prevent him; take, literally from hour
to hour, during these days of more unbroken exposure. From hour to hour
she fairly expected some sign of his having decided on a jump. "Ah yes,
it HAS been as you think; I've strayed away, I've fancied myself free,
given myself in other quantities, with larger generosities, because I
thought you were different--different from what I now see. But it was
only, only, because I didn't know--and you must admit that you gave
me scarce reason enough. Reason enough, I mean, to keep clear of my
mistake; to which I confess, for which