felt I
was really clear about these, so, as to the point I here touch on,
I give her memory the benefit of every doubt. Stricken and solitary,
highly accomplished and now, in her deep mourning, her maturer grace,
and her uncomplaining sorrow incontestably handsome, she presented
herself as leading a life of singular dignity and beauty. I had at first
found a way to believe that I should soon get the better of the reserve
formulated the week after the catastrophe in her reply to an appeal as
to which I was not unconscious that it might strike her as mistimed.
Certainly that reserve was something of a shock to me--certainly it
puzzled me the more I thought of it, though I tried to explain it,
with moments of success, by the supposition of exalted sentiments, of
superstitious scruples, of a refinement of loyalty. Certainly it added
at the same time hugely to the price of Vereker's secret, precious as
that mystery already appeared. I may as well confess abjectly that Mrs.
Corvick's unexpected attitude was the final tap on the nail that was
to fix, as they say, my luckless idea, convert it into the obsession of
which I am for ever conscious. But this only helped me the more to be
artful, to be adroit, to allow time to elapse before renewing my suit.
There were plenty of speculations for the interval, and one of them was
deeply absorbing. Corvick had kept his information from his young friend
till after the removal of the last barriers to their intimacy; then he
had let the cat out of the bag. Was it Gwendolen's idea, taking a hint
from him, to liberate this animal only on the basis of the renewal of
such a relation? Was the figure in the carpet traceable or describable
only for husbands and wives--for lovers supremely united? It came back
to me in a mystifying manner that in Kensington-square, when I told him
that Corvick would have told the girl he loved, some word had dropped
from Vereker that gave colour to this possibility. There might be little
in it, but there was enough to make me wonder if I should have to marry
Mrs. Corvick to get what I wanted. Was I prepared to offer her this
price for the blessing of her knowledge? Ah! that way madness lay--so I
said to myself at least in bewildered hours. I could see meanwhile the
torch she refused to pass on flame away in her chamber of memory--pour
through her eyes a light that made a glow in her lonely house. At the
end of six months I was fully sure of what this warm presence