pearing to
recognise me and smile. She leaned back in her chair in luxurious ease:
I had from the first become aware that the way she fingered her pearls
was a sharp image of the wedded state. Nothing of old had seemed wanting
to her assurance; but I hadn't then dreamed of the art with which she
would wear that assurance as a married woman. She had taken him when
everything had failed; he had taken her when she herself had done so.
His embarrassed eyes confessed it all, confessed the deep peace he found
in it. They only didn't tell me why he had not written to me, nor clear
up as yet a minor obscurity. Flora after a while again lifted the glass
from the ledge of the box and elegantly swept the house with it. Then,
by the mere instinct of her grace, a motion but half conscious, she
inclined her head into the void with the sketch of a salute, producing,
I could see, a perfect imitation of a response to some homage. Dawling
and I looked at each other again: the tears came into his eyes. She
was playing at perfection still, and her misfortune only simplified the
process.

I recognised that this was as near as I should ever come, certainly as
I should come that night, to pressing on her misfortune. Neither of us
would name it more than we were doing then, and Flora would never name
it at all. Little by little I perceived that what had occurred was,
strange as it might appear, the best thing for her happiness. The
question was now only of her beauty and her being seen and marvelled at:
with Dawling to do for her everything in life her activity was limited
to that. Such an activity was all within her scope: it asked nothing
of her that she couldn't splendidly give. As from time to time in our
delicate communion she turned her face to me with the parody of a look
I lost none of the signs of its strange new glory. The expression of
the eyes was a bit of pastel put in by a master's thumb; the whole head,
stamped with a sort of showy suffering, had gained a fineness from what
she had passed through. Yes, Flora was settled for life--nothing could
hurt her further. I foresaw the particular praise she would mostly
incur--she would be incomparably "interesting." She would charm with
her pathos more even than she had charmed with her pleasure. For herself
above all she was fixed for ever, rescued from all change and ransomed
from all doubt. Her old certainties, her old vanities were justified
and sanctified, and in the darkness that ha