sence
diffused it and fully established it, but her absence left comparatively
little of it behind. It dwelt in the very facts of her person--it was
something she happened physically to be; yet--considering that the
question was of something very like loveliness--its envelope of
associations, of memories and recurrences, had no great destiny. She
packed it up and took it away with her quite as if she had been a woman
who had come to sell a set of laces. The laces were as wonderful as ever
when taken out of the box, but to admire again their rarity you had to
send for the woman. What was above all remarkable for our young man was
that Miriam Rooth fetched a fellow, vulgarly speaking, very much less
than Julia at the times when, being on the spot, Julia did fetch. He
could paint Miriam day after day without any agitating blur of vision;
in fact the more he saw of her the clearer grew the atmosphere through
which she blazed, the more her richness became one with that of the
flowering work. There are reciprocities and special sympathies in such a
relation; mysterious affinities they used to be called, divinations of
private congruity. Nick had an unexpressed conviction that if, according
to his defeated desire, he had embarked with Mrs. Dallow in this
particular quest of a great prize, disaster would have overtaken them on
the deep waters. Even with the limited risk indeed disaster had come;
but it was of a different kind and it had the advantage for him that now
she couldn't reproach and denounce him as the cause of it--couldn't do
so at least on any ground he was obliged to recognise. She would never
know how much he had cared for her, how much he cared for her still;
inasmuch as the conclusive proof for himself was his conscious
reluctance to care for another woman--evidence she positively misread.
Some day he would doubtless try to do that; but such a day seemed as yet
far off, and he had meanwhile no spite, no vindictive impulse, to help
him. The soreness that mingled with his liberation, the sense of
indignity even, as of a full cup suddenly dashed by a blundering hand
from his lips, demanded certainly a balm; but it found the balm, for the
time, in another passion, not in a rancorous exercise of the same--a
passion strong enough to make him forget what a pity it was he was not
so formed as to care for two women at once.

As soon as Julia returned to England he broke ground to his mother on
the subject of her making t