oduced on the part
of each a consciousness, an awkwardness, a positive dread of the last
accident of all, the only one with any freshness left, the accident that
would bring them face to face. The final effect of its predecessors had
been to kindle this instinct. They were quite ashamed--perhaps even a
little of each other. So much preparation, so much frustration: what
indeed could be good enough for it all to lead up to? A mere meeting
would be mere flatness. Did I see them at the end of years, they often
asked, just stupidly confronted? If they were bored by the joke they
might be worse bored by something else. They made exactly the same
reflections, and each in some manner was sure to hear of the other's.

I really think it was this peculiar diffidence that finally controlled
the situation. I mean that if they had failed for the first year or
two because they couldn't help it they kept up the habit because they
had--what shall I call it?--grown nervous. It really took some lurking
volition to account for anything so absurd.

III

When to crown our long acquaintance I accepted his renewed offer of
marriage it was humorously said, I know, that I had made the gift of his
photograph a condition. This was so far true that I had refused to
give him mine without it. At any rate I had him at last, in his
high distinction, on the chimney-piece, where the day she called to
congratulate me she came nearer than she had ever done to seeing him. He
had set her in being taken an example which I invited her to follow; he
had sacrificed his perversity--wouldn't she sacrifice hers? She too
must give me something on my engagement--wouldn't she give me the
companion-piece? She laughed and shook her head; she had headshakes
whose impulse seemed to come from as far away as the breeze that stirs a
flower. The companion-piece to the portrait of my future husband was the
portrait of his future wife. She had taken her stand--she could depart
from it as little as she could explain it. It was a prejudice, an
_entetement_, a vow--she would live and die unphotographed. Now too she
was alone in that state: this was what she liked; it made her so much
more original. She rejoiced in the fall of her late associate and looked
a long time at his picture, about which she made no memorable remark,
though she even turned it over to see the back. About our engagement she
was charming--full of cordiality and sympathy. "You've known him even
longer