mind, as
if she sat on her own ground, the light honours of which, at an open
gate, she thus easily did him, while all the vastness and mystery of
the domain stretched off behind. When people were so completely in
possession they could be extraordinarily civil; and our friend had
indeed at this hour a kind of revelation of her heritage. She was
romantic for him far beyond what she could have guessed, and again he
found his small comfort in the conviction that, subtle though she was,
his impression must remain a secret from her. The thing that, once
more, made him uneasy for secrets in general was this particular
patience she could have with his own want of colour; albeit that on the
other hand his uneasiness pretty well dropped after he had been for ten
minutes as colourless as possible and at the same time as responsive.

The moments had already, for that matter, drawn their deepest tinge
from the special interest excited in him by his vision of his
companion's identity with the person whose attitude before the
glimmering altar had so impressed him. This attitude fitted admirably
into the stand he had privately taken about her connexion with Chad on
the last occasion of his seeing them together. It helped him to stick
fast at the point he had then reached; it was there he had resolved
that he WOULD stick, and at no moment since had it seemed as easy to do
so. Unassailably innocent was a relation that could make one of the
parties to it so carry herself. If it wasn't innocent why did she haunt
the churches?--into which, given the woman he could believe he made
out, she would never have come to flaunt an insolence of guilt. She
haunted them for continued help, for strength, for peace--sublime
support which, if one were able to look at it so, she found from day to
day. They talked, in low easy tones and with lifted lingering looks,
about the great monument and its history and its beauty--all of which,
Madame de Vionnet professed, came to her most in the other, the outer
view. "We'll presently, after we go," she said, "walk round it again
if you like. I'm not in a particular hurry, and it will be pleasant to
look at it well with you." He had spoken of the great romancer and the
great romance, and of what, to his imagination, they had done for the
whole, mentioning to her moreover the exorbitance of his purchase, the
seventy blazing volumes that were so out of proportion.

"Out of proportion to what?"

"Well, t