ed me how I had observed at a
particular moment--after Corvick's death--the drop of her desire to see
him face to face. She had got what she wanted without that. I had been
sure that if she hadn't got it she wouldn't have been restrained from
the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflections,
more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my case had
served as a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to add, that my case,
in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't ambiguous enough. At the
thought that Vereker was perhaps at that moment dying there rolled over
me a wave of anguish--a poignant sense of how inconsistently I still
depended on him. A delicacy that it was my one compensation to suffer to
rule me had left the Alps and the Apennines between us, but the vision
of the waning opportunity made me feel as if I might in my despair at
last have gone to him. Of course I would really have done nothing of
the sort. I remained five minutes, while my companions talked of the
new book, and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it I
replied, getting up, that I detested Hugh Vereker--simply couldn't read
him. I went away with the moral certainty that as the door closed
behind me Deane would remark that I was awfully superficial. His hostess
wouldn't contradict him.

I continue to trace with a briefer touch our intensely odd
concatenation. Three weeks after this came Vereker's death, and before
the year was out the death of his wife. That poor lady I had never seen,
but I had had a futile theory that, should she survive him long enough
to be decorously accessible, I might approach her with the feeble
flicker of my petition. Did she know and if she knew would she speak?
It was much to be presumed that for more reasons than one she would
have nothing to say; but when she passed out of all reach I felt
that renouncement was indeed my appointed lot. I was shut up in my
obsession for ever--my gaolers had gone off with the key. I find myself
quite as vague as a captive in a dungeon about the time that further
elapsed before Mrs. Corvick became the wife of Drayton Deane. I had
foreseen, through my bars, this end of the business, though there was no
indecent haste and our friendship had rather fallen off. They were both
so "awfully intellectual" that it struck people as a suitable match, but
I knew better than any one the wealth of understanding the bride
would contribute to the partner