the beast in the jungle - henry james.odt

8/14/2019 the beast in the jungle - henry james.odt

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The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Beast in the Jungle, by Henry James

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and withalmost no restrictions whatsoever. ou may co!y it, give it away orre"use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg #icense includedwith this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

Title$ The Beast in the Jungle

%uthor$ Henry James

&elease 'ate$ (ebruary ), *++ -eBook /+012-This file last u!dated 3ovember 1+, *+/+2

#anguage$ 4nglish

5haracter set encoding$ 678")9)":7 ;:7"%7566 TH4 B4%7T 63 TH4 J:3G#4===

Transcribed from the /0/ ?artin 7ecker edition by 'avid Price, emailcc@+A9coventry.ac.uk

TH4 B4%7T 63 TH4 J:3G#4

5H%PT4& 6

Chat determined the s!eech that startled him in the course of theirencounter scarcely matters, being !robably but some words s!oken byhimself Duite without intention""s!oken as they lingered and slowly movedtogether after their renewal of acDuaintance. He had been conveyed byfriends an hour or two before to the house at which she was stayingE the!arty of visitors at the other house, of whom he was one, and thanks towhom it was his theory, as always, that he was lost in the crowd, hadbeen invited over to luncheon. There had been after luncheon muchdis!ersal, all in the interest of the original motive, a view ofCeatherend itself and the fine things, intrinsic features, !ictures,heirlooms, treasures of all the arts, that made the !lace almost famousEand the great rooms were so numerous that guests could wander at theirwill, hang back from the !rinci!al grou! and in cases where they tooksuch matters with the last seriousness give themselves u! to mysteriousa!!reciations and measurements. There were !ersons to be observed,

singly or in cou!les, bending toward objects in out"of"the"way cornerswith their hands on their knees and their heads nodding Duite as with theem!hasis of an e@cited sense of smell. Chen they were two they eithermingled their sounds of ecstasy or melted into silences of even dee!er


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im!ort, so that there were as!ects of the occasion that gave it for?archer much the air of the Flook round,F !revious to a sale highlyadvertised, that e@cites or Duenches, as may be, the dream ofacDuisition. The dream of acDuisition at Ceatherend would have had to bewild indeed, and John ?archer found himself, among such suggestions,disconcerted almost eDually by the !resence of those who knew too muchand by that of those who knew nothing. The great rooms caused so much

!oetry and history to !ress u!on him that he needed some straying a!artto feel in a !ro!er relation with them, though this im!ulse was not, asha!!ened, like the gloating of some of his com!anions, to be com!ared tothe movements of a dog sniffing a cu!board. 6t had an issue !rom!tlyenough in a direction that was not to have been calculated.

6t led, briefly, in the course of the 8ctober afternoon, to his closermeeting with ?ay Bartram, whose face, a reminder, yet not Duite aremembrance, as they sat much se!arated at a very long table, had begunmerely by troubling him rather !leasantly. 6t affected him as the seDuelof something of which he had lost the beginning. He knew it, and for thetime Duite welcomed it, as a continuation, but didnt know what itcontinued, which was an interest or an amusement the greater as he was

also somehow aware""yet without a direct sign from her""that the youngwoman herself hadnt lost the thread. 7he hadnt lost it, but shewouldnt give it back to him, he saw, without some !utting forth of hishand for itE and he not only saw that, but saw several things more,things odd enough in the light of the fact that at the moment someaccident of grou!ing brought them face to face he was still merelyfumbling with the idea that any contact between them in the !ast wouldhave had no im!ortance. 6f it had had no im!ortance he scarcely knew whyhis actual im!ression of her should so seem to have so muchE the answerto which, however, was that in such a life as they all a!!eared to beleading for the moment one could but take things as they came. He wassatisfied, without in the least being able to say why, that this younglady might roughly have ranked in the house as a !oor relationE satisfied

also that she was not there on a brief visit, but was more or less a !artof the establishment""almost a working, a remunerated !art. 'idnt sheenjoy at !eriods a !rotection that she !aid for by hel!ing, among otherservices, to show the !lace and e@!lain it, deal with the tiresome!eo!le, answer Duestions about the dates of the building, the styles ofthe furniture, the authorshi! of the !ictures, the favourite haunts ofthe ghost 6t wasnt that she looked as if you could have given hershillings""it was im!ossible to look less so. et when she finallydrifted toward him, distinctly handsome, though ever so much older""olderthan when he had seen her before""it might have been as an effect of herguessing that he had, within the cou!le of hours, devoted moreimagination to her than to all the others !ut together, and had thereby!enetrated to a kind of truth that the others were too stu!id for. 7heIwasI there on harder terms than any oneE she was there as a conseDuenceof things suffered, one way and another, in the interval of yearsE andshe remembered him very much as she was remembered""only a good dealbetter.

By the time they at last thus came to s!eech they were alone in one ofthe rooms""remarkable for a fine !ortrait over the chimney"!lace""out ofwhich their friends had !assed, and the charm of it was that even beforethey had s!oken they had !ractically arranged with each other to staybehind for talk. The charm, ha!!ily, was in other things too""!artly inthere being scarce a s!ot at Ceatherend without something to stay behindfor. 6t was in the way the autumn day looked into the high windows as it

wanedE the way the red light, breaking at the close from under a lowsombre sky, reached out in a long shaft and !layed over old wainscots,old ta!estry, old gold, old colour. 6t was most of all !erha!s in theway she came to him as if, since she had been turned on to deal with the


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sim!ler sort, he might, should he choose to kee! the whole thing down,just take her mild attention for a !art of her general business. %s soonas he heard her voice, however, the ga! was filled u! and the missinglink su!!liedE the slight irony he divined in her attitude lost itsadvantage. He almost jum!ed at it to get there before her. F6 met youyears and years ago in &ome. 6 remember all about it.F 7he confessed todisa!!ointment""she had been so sure he didntE and to !rove how well he

did he began to !our forth the !articular recollections that !o!!ed u! ashe called for them. Her face and her voice, all at his service now,worked the miracle""the im!ression o!erating like the torch of alam!lighter who touches into flame, one by one, a long row of gas"jets.?archer flattered himself the illumination was brilliant, yet he wasreally still more !leased on her showing him, with amusement, that in hishaste to make everything right he had got most things rather wrong. 6thadnt been at &ome""it had been at 3a!lesE and it hadnt been eightyears before""it had been more nearly ten. 7he hadnt been, either, withher uncle and aunt, but with her mother and brotherE in addition to whichit was not with the Pembles IheI had been, but with the Boyers, comingdown in their com!any from &ome""a !oint on which she insisted, a littleto his confusion, and as to which she had her evidence in hand. The

Boyers she had known, but didnt know the Pembles, though she had heardof them, and it was the !eo!le he was with who had made them acDuainted.The incident of the thunderstorm that had raged round them with suchviolence as to drive them for refuge into an e@cavation""this incidenthad not occurred at the Palace of the 5aesars, but at Pom!eii, on anoccasion when they had been !resent there at an im!ortant find.

He acce!ted her amendments, he enjoyed her corrections, though the moralof them was, she !ointed out, that he IreallyI didnt remember the leastthing about herE and he only felt it as a drawback that when all was madestrictly historic there didnt a!!ear much of anything left. Theylingered together still, she neglecting her office""for from the momenthe was so clever she had no !ro!er right to him""and both neglecting the

house, just waiting as to see if a memory or two more wouldnt againbreathe on them. 6t hadnt taken them many minutes, after all, to !utdown on the table, like the cards of a !ack, those that constituted theirres!ective handsE only what came out was that the !ack was unfortunatelynot !erfect""that the !ast, invoked, invited, encouraged, could givethem, naturally, no more than it had. 6t had made them ancientlymeet""her at twenty, him at twenty"fiveE but nothing was so strange, theyseemed to say to each other, as that, while so occu!ied, it hadnt done alittle more for them. They looked at each other as with the feeling ofan occasion missedE the !resent would have been so much better if theother, in the far distance, in the foreign land, hadnt been so stu!idlymeagre. There werent, a!!arently, all counted, more than a doen littleold things that had succeeded in coming to !ass between themEtrivialities of youth, sim!licities of freshness, stu!idities ofignorance, small !ossible germs, but too dee!ly buried""too dee!ly;didnt it seem< to s!rout after so many years. ?archer could only feelhe ought to have rendered her some service""saved her from a ca!siedboat in the bay or at least recovered her dressing"bag, filched from hercab in the streets of 3a!les by a laarone with a stiletto. 8r it wouldhave been nice if he could have been taken with fever all alone at hishotel, and she could have come to look after him, to write to his !eo!le,to drive him out in convalescence. IThenI they would be in !ossession ofthe something or other that their actual show seemed to lack. 6t yetsomehow !resented itself, this show, as too good to be s!oiledE so thatthey were reduced for a few minutes more to wondering a little hel!lessly

why""since they seemed to know a certain number of the same !eo!le""theirreunion had been so long averted. They didnt use that name for it, buttheir delay from minute to minute to join the others was a kind ofconfession that they didnt Duite want it to be a failure. Their


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attem!ted su!!osition of reasons for their not having met but showed howlittle they knew of each other. There came in fact a moment when ?archerfelt a !ositive !ang. 6t was vain to !retend she was an old friend, forall the communities were wanting, in s!ite of which it was as an oldfriend that he saw she would have suited him. He had new ones enough""wassurrounded with them for instance on the stage of the other houseE as anew one he !robably wouldnt have so much as noticed her. He would have

liked to invent something, get her to make"believe with him that some!assage of a romantic or critical kind IhadI originally occurred. He wasreally almost reaching out in imagination""as against time""for somethingthat would do, and saying to himself that if it didnt come this sketchof a fresh start would show for Duite awkwardly bungled. They wouldse!arate, and now for no second or no third chance. They would havetried and not succeeded. Then it was, just at the turn, as he afterwardsmade it out to himself, that, everything else failing, she herselfdecided to take u! the case and, as it were, save the situation. He feltas soon as she s!oke that she had been consciously kee!ing back what shesaid and ho!ing to get on without itE a scru!le in her that immenselytouched him when, by the end of three or four minutes more, he was ableto measure it. Chat she brought out, at any rate, Duite cleared the air

and su!!lied the link""the link it was so odd he should frivolously havemanaged to lose.

Fou know you told me something 6ve never forgotten and that again andagain has made me think of you sinceE it was that tremendously hot daywhen we went to 7orrento, across the bay, for the breee. Chat 6 alludeto was what you said to me, on the way back, as we sat under the awningof the boat enjoying the cool. Have you forgottenF

He had forgotten, and was even more sur!rised than ashamed. But thegreat thing was that he saw in this no vulgar reminder of any FsweetFs!eech. The vanity of women had long memories, but she was making noclaim on him of a com!liment or a mistake. Cith another woman, a totally

different one, he might have feared the recall !ossibly even someimbecile Foffer.F 7o, in having to say that he had indeed forgotten, hewas conscious rather of a loss than of a gainE he already saw an interestin the matter of her mention. F6 try to think""but 6 give it u!. et 6remember the 7orrento day.F

F6m not very sure you do,F ?ay Bartram after a moment saidE Fand 6m notvery sure 6 ought to want you to. 6ts dreadful to bring a !erson backat any time to what he was ten years before. 6f youve lived away fromit,F she smiled, Fso much the better.F

F%h if IyouI havent why should 6F he asked.

F#ived away, you mean, from what 6 myself wasF

F(rom what I6I was. 6 was of course an ass,F ?archer went onE Fbut 6would rather know from you just the sort of ass 6 was than""from themoment you have something in your mind""not know anything.F

7till, however, she hesitated. FBut if youve com!letely ceased to bethat sort""F

FChy 6 can then all the more bear to know. Besides, !erha!s 6 havent.F

FPerha!s. et if you havent,F she added, F6 should su!!ose youd

remember. 3ot indeed that I6I in the least connect with my im!ressionthe invidious name you use. 6f 6 had only thought you foolish,F shee@!lained, Fthe thing 6 s!eak of wouldnt so have remained with me. 6twas about yourself.F 7he waited as if it might come to himE but as, only


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meeting her eyes in wonder, he gave no sign, she burnt her shi!s. FHasit ever ha!!enedF

Then it was that, while he continued to stare, a light broke for him andthe blood slowly came to his face, which began to burn with recognition.

F'o you mean 6 told you""F But he faltered, lest what came to him

shouldnt be right, lest he should only give himself away.

F6t was something about yourself that it was natural one shouldntforget""that is if one remembered you at all. Thats why 6 ask you,F shesmiled, Fif the thing you then s!oke of has ever come to !assF

8h then he saw, but he was lost in wonder and found himself embarrassed.This, he also saw, made her sorry for him, as if her allusion had been amistake. 6t took him but a moment, however, to feel it hadnt been, muchas it had been a sur!rise. %fter the first little shock of it herknowledge on the contrary began, even if rather strangely, to taste sweetto him. 7he was the only other !erson in the world then who would haveit, and she had had it all these years, while the fact of his having so

breathed his secret had unaccountably faded from him. 3o wonder theycouldnt have met as if nothing had ha!!ened. F6 judge,F he finallysaid, Fthat 6 know what you mean. 8nly 6 had strangely enough lost anysense of having taken you so far into my confidence.F

F6s it because youve taken so many others as wellF

F6ve taken nobody. 3ot a creature since then.F

F7o that 6m the only !erson who knowsF

FThe only !erson in the world.F

FCell,F she Duickly re!lied, F6 myself have never s!oken. 6ve never,never re!eated of you what you told me.F 7he looked at him so that he!erfectly believed her. Their eyes met over it in such a way that he waswithout a doubt. F%nd 6 never will.F

7he s!oke with an earnestness that, as if almost e@cessive, !ut him atease about her !ossible derision. 7omehow the whole Duestion was a newlu@ury to him""that is from the moment she was in !ossession. 6f shedidnt take the sarcastic view she clearly took the sym!athetic, and thatwas what he had had, in all the long time, from no one whomsoever. Chathe felt was that he couldnt at !resent have begun to tell her, and yetcould !rofit !erha!s e@Duisitely by the accident of having done so ofold. FPlease dont then. Cere just right as it is.F

F8h 6 am,F she laughed, Fif you areKF To which she added$ FThen you dostill feel in the same wayF

6t was im!ossible he shouldnt take to himself that she was reallyinterested, though it all ke!t coming as a !erfect sur!rise. He hadthought of himself so long as abominably alone, and lo he wasnt alone abit. He hadnt been, it a!!eared, for an hour""since those moments onthe 7orrento boat. 6t was she who had been, he seemed to see as helooked at her""she who had been made so by the graceless fact of hisla!se of fidelity. To tell her what he had told her""what had it beenbut to ask something of her something that she had given, in her

charity, without his having, by a remembrance, by a return of the s!irit,failing another encounter, so much as thanked her. Chat he had asked ofher had been sim!ly at first not to laugh at him. 7he had beautifullynot done so for ten years, and she was not doing so now. 7o he had


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endless gratitude to make u!. 8nly for that he must see just how he hadfigured to her. FChat, e@actly, was the account 6 gave""F

F8f the way you did feel Cell, it was very sim!le. ou said you hadhad from your earliest time, as the dee!est thing within you, the senseof being ke!t for something rare and strange, !ossibly !rodigious andterrible, that was sooner or later to ha!!en to you, that you had in your

bones the foreboding and the conviction of, and that would !erha!soverwhelm you.F

F'o you call that very sim!leF John ?archer asked.

7he thought a moment. F6t was !erha!s because 6 seemed, as you s!oke, tounderstand it.F

Fou do understand itF he eagerly asked.

%gain she ke!t her kind eyes on him. Fou still have the beliefF

F8hKF he e@claimed hel!lessly. There was too much to say.

FChatever its to be,F she clearly made out, Fit hasnt yet come.F

He shook his head in com!lete surrender now. F6t hasnt yet come. 8nly,you know, it isnt anything 6m to do, to achieve in the world, to bedistinguished or admired for. 6m not such an ass as IthatI. 6t wouldbe much better, no doubt, if 6 were.F

F6ts to be something youre merely to sufferF

FCell, say to wait for""to have to meet, to face, to see suddenly breakout in my lifeE !ossibly destroying all further consciousness, !ossiblyannihilating meE !ossibly, on the other hand, only altering everything,

striking at the root of all my world and leaving me to the conseDuences,however they sha!e themselves.F

7he took this in, but the light in her eyes continued for him not to bethat of mockery. F6snt what you describe !erha!s but the e@!ectation""orat any rate the sense of danger, familiar to so many !eo!le""of fallingin loveF

John ?archer thought. F'id you ask me that beforeF

F3o""6 wasnt so free"and"easy then. But its what strikes me now.F

F8f course,F he said after a moment, Fit strikes you. 8f course itstrikes ImeI. 8f course whats in store for me may be no more than that.The only thing is,F he went on, Fthat 6 think if it had been that 6should by this time know.F

F'o you mean because youve IbeenI in loveF %nd then as he but lookedat her in silence$ Fouve been in love, and it hasnt meant such acataclysm, hasnt !roved the great affairF

FHere 6 am, you see. 6t hasnt been overwhelming.F

FThen it hasnt been love,F said ?ay Bartram.

FCell, 6 at least thought it was. 6 took it for that""6ve taken it tillnow. 6t was agreeable, it was delightful, it was miserable,F hee@!lained. FBut it wasnt strange. 6t wasnt what my affairs to be.F


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Fou want something all to yourself""something that nobody else knows orIhasI knownF

F6t isnt a Duestion of what 6 want""God knows 6 dont want anything.6ts only a Duestion of the a!!rehension that haunts me""that 6 live withday by day.F

He said this so lucidly and consistently that he could see it furtherim!ose itself. 6f she hadnt been interested before shed have beeninterested now.

F6s it a sense of coming violenceF

4vidently now too again he liked to talk of it. F6 dont think of itas""when it does come""necessarily violent. 6 only think of it asnatural and as of course above all unmistakeable. 6 think of it sim!lyas ItheI thing. ITheI thing will of itself a!!ear natural.F

FThen how will it a!!ear strangeF

?archer bethought himself. F6t wont""to ImeI.F

FTo whom thenF

FCell,F he re!lied, smiling at last, Fsay to you.F

F8h then 6m to be !resentF

FChy you are !resent""since you know.F

F6 see.F 7he turned it over. FBut 6 mean at the catastro!he.F

%t this, for a minute, their lightness gave way to their gravityE it was

as if the long look they e@changed held them together. F6t will onlyde!end on yourself""if youll watch with me.F

F%re you afraidF she asked.

F'ont leave me now,F he went on.

F%re you afraidF she re!eated.

F'o you think me sim!ly out of my mindF he !ursued instead of answering.F'o 6 merely strike you as a harmless lunaticF

F3o,F said ?ay Bartram. F6 understand you. 6 believe you.F

Fou mean you feel how my obsession""!oor old thing""may corres!ond tosome !ossible realityF

FTo some !ossible reality.F

FThen you IwillI watch with meF

7he hesitated, then for the third time !ut her Duestion. F%re youafraidF

F'id 6 tell you 6 was""at 3a!lesF

F3o, you said nothing about it.F

FThen 6 dont know. %nd 6 should like to know,F said John ?archer.


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Foull tell me yourself whether you think so. 6f youll watch with meyoull see.F

FLery good then.F They had been moving by this time across the room, andat the door, before !assing out, they !aused as for the full wind"u! oftheir understanding. F6ll watch with you,F said ?ay Bartram.

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The fact that she FknewF""knew and yet neither chaffed him nor betrayedhim""had in a short time begun to constitute between them a goodly bond,which became more marked when, within the year that followed theirafternoon at Ceatherend, the o!!ortunities for meeting multi!lied. Theevent that thus !romoted these occasions was the death of the ancientlady her great"aunt, under whose wing, since losing her mother, she hadto such an e@tent found shelter, and who, though but the widowed mother

of the new successor to the !ro!erty, had succeeded""thanks to a hightone and a high tem!er""in not forfeiting the su!reme !osition at thegreat house. The de!osition of this !ersonage arrived but with herdeath, which, followed by many changes, made in !articular a differencefor the young woman in whom ?archers e@!ert attention had recognisedfrom the first a de!endent with a !ride that might ache though it didntbristle. 3othing for a long time had made him easier than the thoughtthat the aching must have been much soothed by ?iss Bartrams now findingherself able to set u! a small home in #ondon. 7he had acDuired!ro!erty, to an amount that made that lu@ury just !ossible, under heraunts e@tremely com!licated will, and when the whole matter began to bestraightened out, which indeed took time, she let him know that the ha!!yissue was at last in view. He had seen her again before that day, both

because she had more than once accom!anied the ancient lady to town andbecause he had !aid another visit to the friends who so conveniently madeof Ceatherend one of the charms of their own hos!itality. These friendshad taken him back thereE he had achieved there again with ?iss Bartramsome Duiet detachmentE and he had in #ondon succeeded in !ersuading herto more than one brief absence from her aunt. They went together, onthese latter occasions, to the 3ational Gallery and the 7outh >ensington?useum, where, among vivid reminders, they talked of 6taly at large""notnow attem!ting to recover, as at first, the taste of their youth andtheir ignorance. That recovery, the first day at Ceatherend, had servedits !ur!ose well, had given them Duite enoughE so that they were, to?archers sense, no longer hovering about the head"waters of theirstream, but had felt their boat !ushed shar!ly off and down the current.

They were literally afloat togetherE for our gentleman this was marked,Duite as marked as that the fortunate cause of it was just the buriedtreasure of her knowledge. He had with his own hands dug u! this littlehoard, brought to light""that is to within reach of the dim dayconstituted by their discretions and !rivacies""the object of value thehiding"!lace of which he had, after !utting it into the ground himself,so strangely, so long forgotten. The rare luck of his having again juststumbled on the s!ot made him indifferent to any other DuestionE he woulddoubtless have devoted more time to the odd accident of his la!se ofmemory if he hadnt been moved to devote so much to the sweetness, thecomfort, as he felt, for the future, that this accident itself had hel!ed

to kee! fresh. 6t had never entered into his !lan that any one shouldFknowF, and mainly for the reason that it wasnt in him to tell any one.That would have been im!ossible, for nothing but the amusement of a coldworld would have waited on it. 7ince, however, a mysterious fate had


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o!ened his mouth betimes, in s!ite of him, he would count that acom!ensation and !rofit by it to the utmost. That the right !ersonIshouldI know tem!ered the as!erity of his secret more even than hisshyness had !ermitted him to imagineE and ?ay Bartram was clearly right,because""well, because there she was. Her knowledge sim!ly settled itEhe would have been sure enough by this time had she been wrong. Therewas that in his situation, no doubt, that dis!osed him too much to see

her as a mere confidant, taking all her light for him from the fact""thefact only""of her interest in his !redicamentE from her mercy, sym!athy,seriousness, her consent not to regard him as the funniest of the funny.%ware, in fine, that her !rice for him was just in her giving him thisconstant sense of his being admirably s!ared, he was careful to rememberthat she had also a life of her own, with things that might ha!!en toIherI, things that in friendshi! one should likewise take account of.7omething fairly remarkable came to !ass with him, for that matter, inthis conne@ion""something re!resented by a certain !assage of hisconsciousness, in the suddenest way, from one e@treme to the other.

He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most disinterested!erson in the world, carrying his concentrated burden, his !er!etual

sus!ense, ever so Duietly, holding his tongue about it, giving others noglim!se of it nor of its effect u!on his life, asking of them noallowance and only making on his side all those that were asked. Hehadnt disturbed !eo!le with the Dueerness of their having to know ahaunted man, though he had had moments of rather s!ecial tem!tation onhearing them say they were forsooth Funsettled.F 6f they were asunsettled as he was""he who had never been settled for an hour in hislife""they would know what it meant. et it wasnt, all the same, forhim to make them, and he listened to them civilly enough. This was whyhe had such good""though !ossibly such rather colourless""mannersE thiswas why, above all, he could regard himself, in a greedy world, asdecently""as in fact !erha!s even a little sublimely""unselfish. 8ur!oint is accordingly that he valued this character Duite sufficiently to

measure his !resent danger of letting it la!se, against which he !romisedhimself to be much on his guard. He was Duite ready, none the less, tobe selfish just a little, since surely no more charming occasion for ithad come to him. FJust a little,F in a word, was just as much as ?issBartram, taking one day with another, would let him. He never would bein the least coercive, and would kee! well before him the lines on whichconsideration for her""the very highest""ought to !roceed. He wouldthoroughly establish the heads under which her affairs, her reDuirements,her !eculiarities""he went so far as to give them the latitude of thatname""would come into their intercourse. %ll this naturally was a signof how much he took the intercourse itself for granted. There wasnothing more to be done about that. 6t sim!ly e@istedE had s!rung intobeing with her first !enetrating Duestion to him in the autumn lightthere at Ceatherend. The real form it should have taken on the basisthat stood out large was the form of their marrying. But the devil inthis was that the very basis itself !ut marrying out of the Duestion. Hisconviction, his a!!rehension, his obsession, in short, wasnt a !rivilegehe could invite a woman to shareE and that conseDuence of it was!recisely what was the matter with him. 7omething or other lay in waitfor him, amid the twists and the turns of the months and the years, likea crouching Beast in the Jungle. 6t signified little whether thecrouching Beast were destined to slay him or to be slain. The definite!oint was the inevitable s!ring of the creatureE and the definite lessonfrom that was that a man of feeling didnt cause himself to beaccom!anied by a lady on a tiger"hunt. 7uch was the image under which he

had ended by figuring his life.

They had at first, none the less, in the scattered hours s!ent together,made no allusion to that view of itE which was a sign he was handsomely


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alert to give that he didnt e@!ect, that he in fact didnt care, alwaysto be talking about it. 7uch a feature in ones outlook was really likea hum! on ones back. The difference it made every minute of the daye@isted Duite inde!endently of discussion. 8ne discussed of courseIlikeI a hunchback, for there was always, if nothing else, the hunchbackface. That remained, and she was watching himE but !eo!le watched best,as a general thing, in silence, so that such would be !redominantly the

manner of their vigil. et he didnt want, at the same time, to be tenseand solemnE tense and solemn was what he imagined he too much showed forwith other !eo!le. The thing to be, with the one !erson who knew, waseasy and natural""to make the reference rather than be seeming to avoidit, to avoid it rather than be seeming to make it, and to kee! it, in anycase, familiar, facetious even, rather than !edantic and !ortentous. 7omesuch consideration as the latter was doubtless in his mind for instancewhen he wrote !leasantly to ?iss Bartram that !erha!s the great thing hehad so long felt as in the la! of the gods was no more than thiscircumstance, which touched him so nearly, of her acDuiring a house in#ondon. 6t was the first allusion they had yet again made, needing anyother hitherto so littleE but when she re!lied, after having given himthe news, that she was by no means satisfied with such a trifle as the

clima@ to so s!ecial a sus!ense, she almost set him wondering if shehadnt even a larger conce!tion of singularity for him than he had forhimself. He was at all events destined to become aware little by little,as time went by, that she was all the while looking at his life, judgingit, measuring it, in the light of the thing she knew, which grew to be atlast, with the consecration of the years, never mentioned between themsave as Fthe real truthF about him. That had always been his own form ofreference to it, but she ado!ted the form so Duietly that, looking backat the end of a !eriod, he knew there was no moment at which it wastraceable that she had, as he might say, got inside his idea, ore@changed the attitude of beautifully indulging for that of still morebeautifully believing him.

6t was always o!en to him to accuse her of seeing him but as the mostharmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run""since it covered so muchground""was his easiest descri!tion of their friendshi!. He had a screwloose for her but she liked him in s!ite of it and was !ractically,against the rest of the world, his kind wise kee!er, unremunerated butfairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disre!utablyoccu!ied. The rest of the world of course thought him Dueer, but she,she only, knew how, and above all why, DueerE which was !recisely whatenabled her to dis!ose the concealing veil in the right folds. 7he tookhis gaiety from him""since it had to !ass with them for gaiety""as shetook everything elseE but she certainly so far justified by her unerringtouch his finer sense of the degree to which he had ended by convincingher. I7heI at least never s!oke of the secret of his life e@ce!t as Fthereal truth about you,F and she had in fact a wonderful way of making itseem, as such, the secret of her own life too. That was in fine how heso constantly felt her as allowing for himE he couldnt on the whole callit anything else. He allowed for himself, but she, e@actly, allowedstill moreE !artly because, better !laced for a sight of the matter, shetraced his unha!!y !erversion through reaches of its course into which hecould scarce follow it. He knew how he felt, but, besides knowing that,she knew how he looked as wellE he knew each of the things of im!ortancehe was insidiously ke!t from doing, but she could add u! the amount theymade, understand how much, with a lighter weight on his s!irit, he mighthave done, and thereby establish how, clever as he was, he fell short.%bove all she was in the secret of the difference between the forms he

went through""those of his little office under Government, those ofcaring for his modest !atrimony, for his library, for his garden in thecountry, for the !eo!le in #ondon whose invitations he acce!ted andre!aid""and the detachment that reigned beneath them and that made of all


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behaviour, all that could in the least be called behaviour, a long act ofdissimulation. Chat it had come to was that he wore a mask !ainted withthe social sim!er, out of the eye"holes of which there looked eyes of ane@!ression not in the least matching the other features. This the stu!idworld, even after years, had never more than half discovered. 6t wasonly ?ay Bartram who had, and she achieved, by an art indescribable, thefeat of at once""or !erha!s it was only alternately""meeting the eyes

from in front and mingling her own vision, as from over his shoulder,with their !ee! through the a!ertures.

7o while they grew older together she did watch with him, and so she letthis association give sha!e and colour to her own e@istence. BeneathIherI forms as well detachment had learned to sit, and behaviour hadbecome for her, in the social sense, a false account of herself. Therewas but one account of her that would have been true all the while andthat she could give straight to nobody, least of all to John ?archer. Herwhole attitude was a virtual statement, but the !erce!tion of that onlyseemed called to take its !lace for him as one of the many thingsnecessarily crowded out of his consciousness. 6f she had moreover, likehimself, to make sacrifices to their real truth, it was to be granted

that her com!ensation might have affected her as more !rom!t and morenatural. They had long !eriods, in this #ondon time, during which, whenthey were together, a stranger might have listened to them without in theleast !ricking u! his earsE on the other hand the real truth was eDuallyliable at any moment to rise to the surface, and the auditor would thenhave wondered indeed what they were talking about. They had from anearly hour made u! their mind that society was, luckily, unintelligent,and the margin allowed them by this had fairly become one of theircommon!laces. et there were still moments when the situation turnedalmost fresh""usually under the effect of some e@!ression drawn fromherself. Her e@!ressions doubtless re!eated themselves, but herintervals were generous. FChat saves us, you know, is that we answer socom!letely to so usual an a!!earance$ that of the man and woman whose

friendshi! has become such a daily habit""or almost""as to be at lastindis!ensable.F That for instance was a remark she had freDuently enoughhad occasion to make, though she had given it at different timesdifferent develo!ments. Chat we are es!ecially concerned with is theturn it ha!!ened to take from her one afternoon when he had come to seeher in honour of her birthday. This anniversary had fallen on a 7unday,at a season of thick fog and general outward gloomE but he had broughther his customary offering, having known her now long enough to haveestablished a hundred small traditions. 6t was one of his !roofs tohimself, the !resent he made her on her birthday, that he hadnt sunkinto real selfishness. 6t was mostly nothing more than a small trinket,but it was always fine of its kind, and he was regularly careful to !ayfor it more than he thought he could afford. F8ur habit saves you, atleast, dont you see because it makes you, after all, for the vulgar,indistinguishable from other men. Chats the most inveterate mark of menin general Chy the ca!acity to s!end endless time with dull women""tos!end it 6 wont say without being bored, but without minding that theyare, without being driven off at a tangent by itE which comes to the samething. 6m your dull woman, a !art of the daily bread for which you !rayat church. That covers your tracks more than anything.F

F%nd what covers yoursF asked ?archer, whom his dull woman could mostlyto this e@tent amuse. F6 see of course what you mean by your saving me,in this way and that, so far as other !eo!le are concerned""6ve seen itall along. 8nly what is it that saves IyouI 6 often think, you know,

of that.F

7he looked as if she sometimes thought of that too, but rather in adifferent way. FChere other !eo!le, you mean, are concernedF


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FCell, youre really so in with me, you know""as a sort of result of mybeing so in with yourself. 6 mean of my having such an immense regardfor you, being so tremendously mindful of all youve done for me. 6sometimes ask myself if its Duite fair. (air 6 mean to have so involvedand""since one may say it""interested you. 6 almost feel as if youhadnt really had time to do anything else.F

F%nything else but be interestedF she asked. F%h what else does oneever want to be 6f 6ve been watching with you, as we long ago agreed6 was to do, watchings always in itself an absor!tion.F

F8h certainly,F John ?archer said, Fif you hadnt had your curiosity""K8nly doesnt it sometimes come to you as time goes on that your curiosityisnt being !articularly re!aidF

?ay Bartram had a !ause. F'o you ask that, by any chance, because youfeel at all that yours isnt 6 mean because you have to wait so long.F

8h he understood what she meantK F(or the thing to ha!!en that never

does ha!!en (or the Beast to jum! out 3o, 6m just where 6 was aboutit. 6t isnt a matter as to which 6 can IchooseI, 6 can decide for achange. 6t isnt one as to which there IcanI be a change. 6ts in thela! of the gods. 8nes in the hands of ones law""there one is. %s tothe form the law will take, the way it will o!erate, thats its ownaffair.F

Fes,F ?iss Bartram re!liedE Fof course ones fates coming, of course itIhasI come in its own form and its own way, all the while. 8nly, youknow, the form and the way in your case were to have been""well,something so e@ce!tional and, as one may say, so !articularly IyourIown.F

7omething in this made him look at her with sus!icion. Fou say were toIhaveI been, as if in your heart you had begun to doubt.F

F8hKF she vaguely !rotested.

F%s if you believed,F he went on, Fthat nothing will now take !lace.F

7he shook her head slowly but rather inscrutably. Foure far from mythought.F

He continued to look at her. FChat then is the matter with youF

FCell,F she said after another wait, Fthe matter with me is sim!ly that6m more sure than ever my curiosity, as you call it, will be but toowell re!aid.F

They were frankly grave nowE he had got u! from his seat, had turned oncemore about the little drawing"room to which, year after year, he broughthis inevitable to!icE in which he had, as he might have said, tastedtheir intimate community with every sauce, where every object was asfamiliar to him as the things of his own house and the very car!ets wereworn with his fitful walk very much as the desks in old counting"housesare worn by the elbows of generations of clerks. The generations of hisnervous moods had been at work there, and the !lace was the writtenhistory of his whole middle life. :nder the im!ression of what his

friend had just said he knew himself, for some reason, more aware ofthese thingsE which made him, after a moment, sto! again before her. F6sit !ossibly that youve grown afraidF


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F%fraidF He thought, as she re!eated the word, that his Duestion hadmade her, a little, change colourE so that, lest he should have touchedon a truth, he e@!lained very kindly$ Fou remember that that was whatyou asked ImeI long ago""that first day at Ceatherend.F

F8h yes, and you told me you didnt know""that 6 was to see for myself.Ceve said little about it since, even in so long a time.F

FPrecisely,F ?archer inter!osed""FDuite as if it were too delicate amatter for us to make free with. Muite as if we might find, on !ressure,that 6 IamI afraid. (or then,F he said, Fwe shouldnt, should we Duiteknow what to do.F

7he had for the time no answer to this Duestion. FThere have been dayswhen 6 thought you were. 8nly, of course,F she added, Fthere have beendays when we have thought almost anything.F

F4verything. 8hKF ?archer softly groaned, as with a gas!, half s!ent, atthe face, more uncovered just then than it had been for a long while, ofthe imagination always with them. 6t had always had its incalculable

moments of glaring out, Duite as with the very eyes of the very Beast,and, used as he was to them, they could still draw from him the tributeof a sigh that rose from the de!ths of his being. %ll they had thought,first and last, rolled over himE the !ast seemed to have been reduced tomere barren s!eculation. This in fact was what the !lace had just struckhim as so full of""the sim!lification of everything but the state ofsus!ense. That remained only by seeming to hang in the void surroundingit. 4ven his original fear, if fear it as had been, had lost itself inthe desert. F6 judge, however,F he continued, Fthat you see 6m notafraid now.F

FChat 6 see, as 6 make it out, is that youve achieved something almostun!recedented in the way of getting used to danger. #iving with it so

long and so closely youve lost your sense of itE you know its there,but youre indifferent, and you cease even, as of old, to have to whistlein the dark. 5onsidering what the danger is,F ?ay Bartram wound u!, F6mbound to say 6 dont think your attitude could well be sur!assed.F

John ?archer faintly smiled. F6ts heroicF

F5ertainly""call it that.F

6t was what he would have liked indeed to call it. F6 IamI then a man ofcourageF

FThats what you were to show me.F

He still, however, wondered. FBut doesnt the man of courage know whathes afraid of""or not afraid of 6 dont know IthatI, you see. 6 dontfocus it. 6 cant name it. 6 only know 6m e@!osed.F

Fes, but e@!osed""how shall 6 say""so directly. 7o intimately. Thatssurely enough.F

F4nough to make you feel then""as what we may call the end and the u!shotof our watch""that 6m not afraidF

Foure not afraid. But it isnt,F she said, Fthe end of our watch. That

is it isnt the end of yours. ouve everything still to see.F

FThen why havent youF he asked. He had had, all along, to"day, thesense of her kee!ing something back, and he still had it. %s this was


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his first im!ression of that it Duite made a date. The case was the moremarked as she didnt at first answerE which in turn made him go on. Fouknow something 6 dont.F Then his voice, for that of a man of courage,trembled a little. Fou know whats to ha!!en.F Her silence, with theface she showed, was almost a confession""it made him sure. Fou know,and youre afraid to tell me. 6ts so bad that youre afraid 6ll findout.F

%ll this might be true, for she did look as if, une@!ectedly to her, hehad crossed some mystic line that she had secretly drawn round her. etshe might, after all, not have worriedE and the real clima@ was that hehimself, at all events, neednt. Foull never find out.F

5H%PT4& 666

6t was all to have made, none the less, as 6 have said, a dateE which

came out in the fact that again and again, even after long intervals,other things that !assed between them were in relation to this hour butthe character of recalls and results. 6ts immediate effect had beenindeed rather to lighten insistence""almost to !rovoke a reactionE as iftheir to!ic had dro!!ed by its own weight and as if moreover, for thatmatter, ?archer had been visited by one of his occasional warningsagainst egotism. He had ke!t u!, he felt, and very decently on thewhole, his consciousness of the im!ortance of not being selfish, and itwas true that he had never sinned in that direction without !rom!tlyenough trying to !ress the scales the other way. He often re!aired hisfault, the season !ermitting, by inviting his friend to accom!any him tothe o!eraE and it not infreDuently thus ha!!ened that, to show he didntwish her to have but one sort of food for her mind, he was the cause of

her a!!earing there with him a doen nights in the month. 6t evenha!!ened that, seeing her home at such times, he occasionally went inwith her to finish, as he called it, the evening, and, the better to makehis !oint, sat down to the frugal but always careful little su!!er thatawaited his !leasure. His !oint was made, he thought, by his noteternally insisting with her on himselfE made for instance, at suchhours, when it befell that, her !iano at hand and each of them familiarwith it, they went over !assages of the o!era together. 6t chanced to beon one of these occasions, however, that he reminded her of her nothaving answered a certain Duestion he had !ut to her during the talk thathad taken !lace between them on her last birthday. FChat is it thatsaves IyouIF""saved her, he meant, from that a!!earance of variationfrom the usual human ty!e. 6f he had !ractically esca!ed remark, as she!retended, by doing, in the most im!ortant !articular, what most mendo""find the answer to life in !atching u! an alliance of a sort with awoman no better than himself""how had she esca!ed it, and how could thealliance, such as it was, since they must su!!ose it had been more orless noticed, have failed to make her rather !ositively talked about

F6 never said,F ?ay Bartram re!lied, Fthat it hadnt made me a good dealtalked about.F

F%h well then youre not saved.F

F6t hasnt been a Duestion for me. 6f youve had your woman 6ve had,F

she said, Fmy man.F

F%nd you mean that makes you all rightF


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8h it was always as if there were so much to sayK

F6 dont know why it shouldnt make me""humanly, which is what weres!eaking of""as right as it makes you.F

F6 see,F ?archer returned. FHumanly, no doubt, as showing that youreliving for something. 3ot, that is, just for me and my secret.F

?ay Bartram smiled. F6 dont !retend it e@actly shows that 6m notliving for you. 6ts my intimacy with you thats in Duestion.F

He laughed as he saw what she meant. Fes, but since, as you say, 6monly, so far as !eo!le make out, ordinary, youre""arent you no morethan ordinary either. ou hel! me to !ass for a man like another. 7o if6 IamI, as 6 understand you, youre not com!romised. 6s that itF

7he had another of her waits, but she s!oke clearly enough. FThats it.6ts all that concerns me""to hel! you to !ass for a man like another.F

He was careful to acknowledge the remark handsomely. FHow kind, how

beautiful, you are to meK How shall 6 ever re!ay youF

7he had her last grave !ause, as if there might be a choice of ways. Butshe chose. FBy going on as you are.F

6t was into this going on as he was that they rela!sed, and really for solong a time that the day inevitably came for a further sounding of theirde!ths. These de!ths, constantly bridged over by a structure firm enoughin s!ite of its lightness and of its occasional oscillation in thesomewhat vertiginous air, invited on occasion, in the interest of theirnerves, a dro!!ing of the !lummet and a measurement of the abyss. %difference had been made moreover, once for all, by the fact that she hadall the while not a!!eared to feel the need of rebutting his charge of an

idea within her that she didnt dare to e@!ress""a charge uttered justbefore one of the fullest of their later discussions ended. 6t had comeu! for him then that she FknewF something and that what she knew wasbad""too bad to tell him. Chen he had s!oken of it as visibly so badthat she was afraid he might find it out, her re!ly had left the mattertoo eDuivocal to be let alone and yet, for ?archers s!ecial sensibility,almost too formidable again to touch. He circled about it at a distancethat alternately narrowed and widened and that still wasnt much affectedby the consciousness in him that there was nothing she could Fknow,Fafter all, any better than he did. 7he had no source of knowledge hehadnt eDually""e@ce!t of course that she might have finer nerves. Thatwas what women had where they were interestedE they made out things,where !eo!le were concerned, that the !eo!le often couldnt have made outfor themselves. Their nerves, their sensibility, their imagination, wereconductors and revealers, and the beauty of ?ay Bartram was in !articularthat she had given herself so to his case. He felt in these days what,oddly enough, he had never felt before, the growth of a dread of losingher by some catastro!he""some catastro!he that yet wouldnt at all be thecatastro!he$ !artly because she had almost of a sudden begun to strikehim as more useful to him than ever yet, and !artly by reason of ana!!earance of uncertainty in her health, co"incident and eDually new. 6twas characteristic of the inner detachment he had hitherto sosuccessfully cultivated and to which our whole account of him is areference, it was characteristic that his com!lications, such as theywere, had never yet seemed so as at this crisis to thicken about him,

even to the !oint of making him ask himself if he were, by any chance, ofa truth, within sight or sound, within touch or reach, within theimmediate jurisdiction, of the thing that waited.


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Chen the day came, as come it had to, that his friend confessed to himher fear of a dee! disorder in her blood, he felt somehow the shadow of achange and the chill of a shock. He immediately began to imagineaggravations and disasters, and above all to think of her !eril as thedirect menace for himself of !ersonal !rivation. This indeed gave himone of those !artial recoveries of eDuanimity that were agreeable tohim""it showed him that what was still first in his mind was the loss she

herself might suffer. FChat if she should have to die before knowing,before seeing""F 6t would have been brutal, in the early stages of hertrouble, to !ut that Duestion to herE but it had immediately sounded forhim to his own concern, and the !ossibility was what most made him sorryfor her. 6f she did Fknow,F moreover, in the sense of her having hadsome""what should he think""mystical irresistible light, this would makethe matter not better, but worse, inasmuch as her original ado!tion ofhis own curiosity had Duite become the basis of her life. 7he had beenliving to see what would IbeI to be seen, and it would Duite lacerate herto have to give u! before the accom!lishment of the vision. Theserefle@ions, as 6 say, Duickened his generosityE yet, make them as hemight, he saw himself, with the la!se of the !eriod, more and moredisconcerted. 6t la!sed for him with a strange steady swee!, and the

oddest oddity was that it gave him, inde!endently of the threat of muchinconvenience, almost the only !ositive sur!rise his career, if career itcould be called, had yet offered him. 7he ke!t the house as she hadnever doneE he had to go to her to see her""she could meet him nowherenow, though there was scarce a corner of their loved old #ondon in whichshe hadnt in the !ast, at one time or another, done soE and he found heralways seated by her fire in the dee! old"fashioned chair she was lessand less able to leave. He had been struck one day, after an absencee@ceeding his usual measure, with her suddenly looking much older to himthan he had ever thought of her beingE then he recognised that thesuddenness was all on his side""he had just sim!ly and suddenly noticed.7he looked older because inevitably, after so many years, she IwasI old,or almostE which was of course true in still greater measure of her

com!anion. 6f she was old, or almost, John ?archer assuredly was, andyet it was her showing of the lesson, not his own, that brought the truthhome to him. His sur!rises began hereE when once they had begun theymulti!liedE they came rather with a rush$ it was as if, in the oddest wayin the world, they had all been ke!t back, sown in a thick cluster, forthe late afternoon of life, the time at which for !eo!le in general theune@!ected has died out.

8ne of them was that he should have caught himself""for he IhadI sodone""IreallyI wondering if the great accident would take form now asnothing more than his being condemned to see this charming woman, thisadmirable friend, !ass away from him. He had never so unreservedlyDualified her as while confronted in thought with such a !ossibilityE ins!ite of which there was small doubt for him that as an answer to hislong riddle the mere effacement of even so fine a feature of hissituation would be an abject anticlima@. 6t would re!resent, asconnected with his !ast attitude, a dro! of dignity under the shadow ofwhich his e@istence could only become the most grotesDues of failures. Hehad been far from holding it a failure""long as he had waited for thea!!earance that was to make it a success. He had waited for Duiteanother thing, not for such a thing as that. The breath of his goodfaith came short, however, as he recognised how long he had waited, orhow long at least his com!anion had. That she, at all events, might berecorded as having waited in vain""this affected him shar!ly, and all themore because of his at first having done little more than amuse himself

with the idea. 6t grew more grave as the gravity of her condition grew,and the state of mind it !roduced in him, which he himself ended bywatching as if it had been some definite disfigurement of his outer!erson, may !ass for another of his sur!rises. This conjoined itself


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still with another, the really stu!efying consciousness of a Duestionthat he would have allowed to sha!e itself had he dared. Chat dideverything mean""what, that is, did IsheI mean, she and her vain waitingand her !robable death and the soundless admonition of it all""unlessthat, at this time of day, it was sim!ly, it was overwhelmingly too lateHe had never at any stage of his Dueer consciousness admitted the whis!erof such a correctionE he had never till within these last few months been

so false to his conviction as not to hold that what was to come to himhad time, whether IheI struck himself as having it or not. That at last,at last, he certainly hadnt it, to s!eak of, or had it but in thescantiest measure""such, soon enough, as things went with him, became theinference with which his old obsession had to reckon$ and this it was nothel!ed to do by the more and more confirmed a!!earance that the greatvagueness casting the long shadow in which he had lived had, to attestitself, almost no margin left. 7ince it was in Time that he was to havemet his fate, so it was in Time that his fate was to have actedE and ashe waked u! to the sense of no longer being young, which was e@actly thesense of being stale, just as that, in turn, was the sense of being weak,he waked u! to another matter beside. 6t all hung togetherE they weresubject, he and the great vagueness, to an eDual and indivisible law.

Chen the !ossibilities themselves had accordingly turned stale, when thesecret of the gods had grown faint, had !erha!s even Duite eva!orated,that, and that only, was failure. 6t wouldnt have been failure to bebankru!t, dishonoured, !illoried, hangedE it was failure not to beanything. %nd so, in the dark valley into which his !ath had taken itsunlooked"for twist, he wondered not a little as he gro!ed. He didntcare what awful crash might overtake him, with what ignominy or whatmonstrosity he might yet he associated""since he wasnt after all tooutterly old to suffer""if it would only be decently !ro!ortionate to the!osture he had ke!t, all his life, in the threatened !resence of it. Hehad but one desire left""that he shouldnt have been Fsold.F

5H%PT4& 6L

Then it was that, one afternoon, while the s!ring of the year was youngand new she met all in her own way his frankest betrayal of these alarms.He had gone in late to see her, but evening hadnt settled and she was!resented to him in that long fresh light of waning %!ril days whichaffects us often with a sadness shar!er than the greyest hours of autumn.The week had been warm, the s!ring was su!!osed to have begun early, and?ay Bartram sat, for the first time in the year, without a fireE a factthat, to ?archers sense, gave the scene of which she formed !art asmooth and ultimate look, an air of knowing, in its immaculate order andcold meaningless cheer, that it would never see a fire again. Her ownas!ect""he could scarce have said why""intensified this note. %lmost aswhite as wa@, with the marks and signs in her face as numerous and asfine as if they had been etched by a needle, with soft white dra!eriesrelieved by a faded green scarf on the delicate tone of which the yearshad further refined, she was the !icture of a serene and e@Duisite butim!enetrable s!hin@, whose head, or indeed all whose !erson, might havebeen !owdered with silver. 7he was a s!hin@, yet with her white !etalsand green fronds she might have been a lily too""only an artificial lily,wonderfully imitated and constantly ke!t, without dust or stain, thoughnot e@em!t from a slight droo! and a com!le@ity of faint creases, under

some clear glass bell. The !erfection of household care, of high !olishand finish, always reigned in her rooms, but they now looked most as ifeverything had been wound u!, tucked in, !ut away, so that she might sitwith folded hands and with nothing more to do. 7he was Fout of it,F to


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6t was oddly ironic. F'o you mean youre !re!ared to go furtherF

7he was frail and ancient and charming as she continued to look at him,yet it was rather as if she had lost the thread. F'o you consider thatwe went farF

FChy 6 thought it the !oint you were just making""that we IhadI lookedmost things in the face.F

F6ncluding each otherF 7he still smiled. FBut youre Duite right.Ceve had together great imaginations, often great fearsE but some ofthem have been uns!oken.F

FThen the worst""we havent faced that. 6 IcouldI face it, 6 believe, if6 knew what you think it. 6 feel,F he e@!lained, Fas if 6 had lost my!ower to conceive such things.F %nd he wondered if he looked as blank ashe sounded. F6ts s!ent.F

FThen why do you assume,F she asked, Fthat mine isntF

FBecause youve given me signs to the contrary. 6t isnt a Duestion foryou of conceiving, imagining, com!aring. 6t isnt a Duestion now ofchoosing.F %t last he came out with it. Fou know something 6 dont.ouve shown me that before.F

These last words had affected her, he made out in a moment, e@ceedingly,and she s!oke with firmness. F6ve shown you, my dear, nothing.F

He shook his head. Fou cant hide it.F

F8h, ohKF ?ay Bartram sounded over what she couldnt hide. 6t was almosta smothered groan.

Fou admitted it months ago, when 6 s!oke of it to you as of somethingyou were afraid 6 should find out. our answer was that 6 couldnt, that6 wouldnt, and 6 dont !retend 6 have. But you had something thereforein mind, and 6 see now how it must have been, how it still is, the!ossibility that, of all !ossibilities, has settled itself for you as theworst. This,F he went on, Fis why 6 a!!eal to you. 6m only afraid ofignorance to"day""6m not afraid of knowledge.F %nd then as for a whileshe said nothing$ FChat makes me sure is that 6 see in your face and feelhere, in this air and amid these a!!earances, that youre out of it.ouve done. ouve had your e@!erience. ou leave me to my fate.F

Cell, she listened, motionless and white in her chair, as on a decisionto be made, so that her manner was fairly an avowal, though still, with asmall fine inner stiffness, an im!erfect surrender. F6t IwouldI be theworst,F she finally let herself say. F6 mean the thing 6ve never said.F

6t hushed him a moment. F?ore monstrous than all the monstrosities wevenamedF

F?ore monstrous. 6snt that what you sufficiently e@!ress,F she asked,Fin calling it the worstF

?archer thought. F%ssuredly""if you mean, as 6 do, something thatincludes all the loss and all the shame that are thinkable.F

F6t would if it IshouldI ha!!en,F said ?ay Bartram. FChat were s!eakingof, remember, is only my idea.F


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F6ts your belief,F ?archer returned. FThats enough for me. 6 feelyour beliefs are right. Therefore if, having this one, you give me nomore light on it, you abandon me.F

F3o, noKF she re!eated. F6m with you""dont you see""still.F %nd asto make it more vivid to him she rose from her chair""a movement sheseldom risked in these days""and showed herself, all dra!ed and all soft,

in her fairness and slimness. F6 havent forsaken you.F

6t was really, in its effort against weakness, a generous assurance, andhad the success of the im!ulse not, ha!!ily, been great, it would havetouched him to !ain more than to !leasure. But the cold charm in hereyes had s!read, as she hovered before him, to all the rest of her!erson, so that it was for the minute almost a recovery of youth. Hecouldnt !ity her for thatE he could only take her as she showed""asca!able even yet of hel!ing him. 6t was as if, at the same time, herlight might at any instant go outE wherefore he must make the most of it.There !assed before him with intensity the three or four things he wantedmost to knowE but the Duestion that came of itself to his li!s reallycovered the others. FThen tell me if 6 shall consciously suffer.F

7he !rom!tly shook her head. F3everKF

6t confirmed the authority he im!uted to her, and it !roduced on him ane@traordinary effect. FCell, whats better than that 'o you call thatthe worstF

Fou think nothing is betterF she asked.

7he seemed to mean something so s!ecial that he again shar!ly wondered,though still with the dawn of a !ros!ect of relief. FChy not, if onedoesnt IknowIF %fter which, as their eyes, over his Duestion, met in asilence, the dawn dee!ened, and something to his !ur!ose came

!rodigiously out of her very face. His own, as he took it in, suddenlyflushed to the forehead, and he gas!ed with the force of a !erce!tion towhich, on the instant, everything fitted. The sound of his gas! filledthe airE then he became articulate. F6 see""if 6 dont sufferKF

6n her own look, however, was doubt. Fou see whatF

FChy what you mean""what youve always meant.F

7he again shook her head. FChat 6 mean isnt what 6ve always meant.6ts different.F

F6ts something newF

7he hung back from it a little. F7omething new. 6ts not what youthink. 6 see what you think.F

His divination drew breath thenE only her correction might be wrong. F6tisnt that 6 IamI a blockheadF he asked between faintness and grimness.F6t isnt that its all a mistakeF

F% mistakeF she !ityingly echoed. IThatI !ossibility, for her, he saw,would be monstrousE and if she guaranteed him the immunity from !ain itwould accordingly not be what she had in mind. F8h no,F she declaredEFits nothing of that sort. ouve been right.F

et he couldnt hel! asking himself if she werent, thus !ressed,s!eaking but to save him. 6t seemed to him he should be most in a holeif his history should !rove all a !latitude. F%re you telling me the


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truth, so that 6 shant have been a bigger idiot than 6 can bear to know6 IhaventI lived with a vain imagination, in the most besotted illusion6 havent waited but to see the door shut in my faceF

7he shook her head again. FHowever the case stands IthatI isnt thetruth. Chatever the reality, it IisI a reality. The door isnt shut.The doors o!en,F said ?ay Bartram.

FThen somethings to comeF

7he waited once again, always with her cold sweet eyes on him. F6tsnever too late.F 7he had, with her gliding ste!, diminished the distancebetween them, and she stood nearer to him, close to him, a minute, as ifstill charged with the uns!oken. Her movement might have been for somefiner em!hasis of what she was at once hesitating and deciding to say. Hehad been standing by the chimney"!iece, fireless and s!arely adorned, asmall !erfect old (rench clock and two morsels of rosy 'resdenconstituting all its furnitureE and her hand gras!ed the shelf while sheke!t him waiting, gras!ed it a little as for su!!ort and encouragement.7he only ke!t him waiting, howeverE that is he only waited. 6t had

become suddenly, from her movement and attitude, beautiful and vivid tohim that she had something more to give himE her wasted face delicatelyshone with it""it glittered almost as with the white lustre of silver inher e@!ression. 7he was right, incontestably, for what he saw in herface was the truth, and strangely, without conseDuence, while their talkof it as dreadful was still in the air, she a!!eared to !resent it asinordinately soft. This, !rom!ting bewilderment, made him but ga!e themore gratefully for her revelation, so that they continued for someminutes silent, her face shining at him, her contact im!onderably!ressing, and his stare all kind but all e@!ectant. The end, none theless, was that what he had e@!ected failed to come to him. 7omethingelse took !lace instead, which seemed to consist at first in the mereclosing of her eyes. 7he gave way at the same instant to a slow fine

shudder, and though he remained staring""though he stared in fact but theharder""turned off and regained her chair. 6t was the end of what shehad been intending, but it left him thinking only of that.

FCell, you dont say""F

7he had touched in her !assage a bell near the chimney and had sunk backstrangely !ale. F6m afraid 6m too ill.F

FToo ill to tell meF it s!rang u! shar! to him, and almost to his li!s,the fear she might die without giving him light. He checked himself intime from so e@!ressing his Duestion, but she answered as if she hadheard the words.

F'ont you know""nowF

F3ow""F 7he had s!oken as if some difference had been made withinthe moment. But her maid, Duickly obedient to her bell, was already withthem. F6 know nothing.F %nd he was afterwards to say to himself that hemust have s!oken with odious im!atience, such an im!atience as to showthat, su!remely disconcerted, he washed his hands of the whole Duestion.

F8hKF said ?ay Bartram.

F%re you in !ainF he asked as the woman went to her.

F3o,F said ?ay Bartram.

Her maid, who had !ut an arm round her as if to take her to her room,


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fi@ed on him eyes that a!!ealingly contradicted herE in s!ite of which,however, he showed once more his mystification.

FChat then has ha!!enedF

7he was once more, with her com!anions hel!, on her feet, and, feelingwithdrawal im!osed on him, he had blankly found his hat and gloves and

had reached the door. et he waited for her answer. FChat IwasI to,Fshe said.

5H%PT4& L

He came back the ne@t day, but she was then unable to see him, and as itwas literally the first time this had occurred in the long stretch oftheir acDuaintance he turned away, defeated and sore, almost angry""orfeeling at least that such a break in their custom was really the

beginning of the end""and wandered alone with his thoughts, es!eciallywith the one he was least able to kee! down. 7he was dying and he wouldlose herE she was dying and his life would end. He sto!!ed in the Park,into which he had !assed, and stared before him at his recurrent doubt.%way from her the doubt !ressed againE in her !resence he had believedher, but as he felt his forlornness he threw himself into the e@!lanationthat, nearest at hand, had most of a miserable warmth for him and leastof a cold torment. 7he had deceived him to save him""to !ut him off withsomething in which he should be able to rest. Chat could the thing thatwas to ha!!en to him be, after all, but just this thing that had began toha!!en Her dying, her death, his conseDuent solitude""that was what hehad figured as the Beast in the Jungle, that was what had been in the la!of the gods. He had had her word for it as he left her""what else on

earth could she have meant 6t wasnt a thing of a monstrous orderE nota fate rare and distinguishedE not a stroke of fortune that overwhelmedand immortalisedE it had only the stam! of the common doom. But !oor?archer at this hour judged the common doom sufficient. 6t would servehis turn, and even as the consummation of infinite waiting he would bendhis !ride to acce!t it. He sat down on a bench in the twilight. Hehadnt been a fool. 7omething had IbeenI, as she had said, to come.Before he rose indeed it had Duite struck him that the final fact reallymatched with the long avenue through which he had had to reach it. %ssharing his sus!ense and as giving herself all, giving her life, to bringit to an end, she had come with him every ste! of the way. He had livedby her aid, and to leave her behind would be cruelly, damnably to missher. Chat could be more overwhelming than that

Cell, he was to know within the week, for though she ke!t him a while atbay, left him restless and wretched during a series of days on each ofwhich he asked about her only again to have to turn away, she ended histrial by receiving him where she had always received him. et she hadbeen brought out at some haard into the !resence of so many of thethings that were, consciously, vainly, half their !ast, and there wasscant service left in the gentleness of her mere desire, all too visible,to check his obsession and wind u! his long trouble. That was clearlywhat she wantedE the one thing more for her own !eace while she couldstill !ut out her hand. He was so affected by her state that, onceseated by her chair, he was moved to let everything goE it was she

herself therefore who brought him back, took u! again, before shedismissed him, her last word of the other time. 7he showed how shewished to leave their business in order. F6m not sure you understood.ouve nothing to wait for more. 6t IhasI come.F


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8h how he looked at herK F&eallyF

F&eally.F

FThe thing that, as you said, IwasI toF

FThe thing that we began in our youth to watch for.F

(ace to face with her once more he believed herE it was a claim to whichhe had so abjectly little to o!!ose. Fou mean that it has come as a!ositive definite occurrence, with a name and a dateF

FPositive. 'efinite. 6 dont know about the name, but, oh with adateKF

He found himself again too hel!lessly at sea. FBut come in thenight""come and !assed me byF

?ay Bartram had her strange faint smile. F8h no, it hasnt !assed you

byKF

FBut if 6 havent been aware of it and it hasnt touched me""F

F%h your not being aware of itF""and she seemed to hesitate an instant todeal with this""Fyour not being aware of it is the strangeness in thestrangeness. 6ts the wonder IofI the wonder.F 7he s!oke as with thesoftness almost of a sick child, yet now at last, at the end of all, withthe !erfect straightness of a sibyl. 7he visibly knew that she knew, andthe effect on him was of something co"ordinate, in its high character,with the law that had ruled him. 6t was the true voice of the lawE so onher li!s would the law itself have sounded. F6t IhasI touched you,F shewent on. F6t has done its office. 6t has made you all its own.F

F7o utterly without my knowing itF

F7o utterly without your knowing it.F His hand, as he leaned to her, wason the arm of her chair, and, dimly smiling always now, she !laced herown on it. F6ts enough if I6I know it.F

F8hKF he confusedly breathed, as she herself of late so often had done.

FChat 6 long ago said is true. oull never know now, and 6 think youought to be content. ouve IhadI it,F said ?ay Bartram.

FBut had whatF

FChy what was to have marked you out. The !roof of your law. 6t hasacted. 6m too glad,F she then bravely added, Fto have been able to seewhat its InotI.F

He continued to attach his eyes to her, and with the sense that it wasall beyond him, and that IsheI was too, he would still have shar!lychallenged her hadnt he so felt it an abuse of her weakness to do morethan take devoutly what she gave him, take it hushed as to a revelation.6f he did s!eak, it was out of the foreknowledge of his loneliness tocome. F6f youre glad of what its not it might then have been worseF

7he turned her eyes away, she looked straight before herE with whichafter a moment$ FCell, you know our fears.F

He wondered. F6ts something then we never fearedF


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8n this slowly she turned to him. F'id we ever dream, with all ourdreams, that we should sit and talk of it thusF

He tried for a little to make out that they hadE but it was as if theirdreams, numberless enough, were in solution in some thick cold mistthrough which thought lost itself. F6t might have been that we couldnt

talk.F

FCellF""she did her best for him""Fnot from this side. This, you see,Fshe said, Fis the IotherI side.F

F6 think,F !oor ?archer returned, Fthat all sides are the same to me.FThen, however, as she gently shook her head in correction$ FCe mightnt,as it were, have got across""F

FTo where we are""no. Cere IhereIF""she made her weak em!hasis.

F%nd much good does it do usKF was her friends frank comment.

F6t does us the good it can. 6t does us the good that IitI isnt here.6ts !ast. 6ts behind,F said ?ay Bartram. FBefore""F but her voicedro!!ed.

He had got u!, not to tire her, but it was hard to combat his yearning.7he after all told him nothing but that his light had failed""which heknew well enough without her. FBefore""F he blankly echoed.

FBefore you see, it was always to IcomeI. That ke!t it !resent.F

F8h 6 dont care what comes nowK Besides,F ?archer added, Fit seems tome 6 liked it better !resent, as you say, than 6 can like it absent withIyourI absence.F

F8h mineKF""and her !ale hands made light of it.

FCith the absence of everything.F He had a dreadful sense of standingthere before her for""so far as anything but this !roved, this bottomlessdro! was concerned""the last time of their life. 6t rested on him with aweight he felt he could scarce bear, and this weight it a!!arently wasthat still !ressed out what remained in him of s!eakable !rotest. F6believe youE but 6 cant begin to !retend 6 understand. I3othingI, forme, is !astE nothing IwillI !ass till 6 !ass myself, which 6 !ray mystars may be as soon as !ossible. 7ay, however,F he added, Fthat 6veeaten my cake, as you contend, to the last crumb""how can the thing 6venever felt at all be the thing 6 was marked out to feelF

7he met him !erha!s less directly, but she met him un!erturbed. Foutake your feelings for granted. ou were to suffer your fate. Thatwas not necessarily to know it.F

FHow in the world""when what is such knowledge but sufferingF

7he looked u! at him a while in silence. F3o""you dont understand.F

F6 suffer,F said John ?archer.

F'ont, dontKF

FHow can 6 hel! at least IthatIF

FI'ontIKF ?ay Bartram re!eated.


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7he s!oke it in a tone so s!ecial, in s!ite of her weakness, that hestared an instant""stared as if some light, hitherto hidden, hadshimmered across his vision. 'arkness again closed over it, but thegleam had already become for him an idea. FBecause 6 havent theright""F

F'ont IknowI""when you neednt,F she mercifully urged. Fou neednt""forwe shouldnt.F

F7houldntF 6f he could but know what she meantK

F3o"" its too much.F

FToo muchF he still asked but with a mystification that was the ne@tmoment of a sudden to give way. Her words, if they meant something,affected him in this light""the light also of her wasted face""as meaningIallI, and the sense of what knowledge had been for herself came over himwith a rush which broke through into a Duestion. F6s it of that thenyoure dyingF

7he but watched him, gravely at first, as to see, with this, where hewas, and she might have seen something or feared something that moved hersym!athy. F6 would live for you still""if 6 could.F Her eyes closed fora little, as if, withdrawn into herself, she were for a last time trying.FBut 6 cantKF she said as she raised them again to take leave of him.

7he couldnt indeed, as but too !rom!tly and shar!ly a!!eared, and he hadno vision of her after this that was anything but darkness and doom. Theyhad !arted for ever in that strange talkE access to her chamber of !ain,rigidly guarded, was almost wholly forbidden himE he was feeling nowmoreover, in the face of doctors, nurses, the two or three relativesattracted doubtless by the !resum!tion of what she had to Fleave,F how

few were the rights, as they were called in such cases, that he had to!ut forward, and how odd it might even seem that their intimacy shouldnthave given him more of them. The stu!idest fourth cousin had more, eventhough she had been nothing in such a !ersons life. 7he had been afeature of features in IhisI, for what else was it to have been soindis!ensable 7trange beyond saying were the ways of e@istence,baffling for him the anomaly of his lack, as he felt it to be, of!roducible claim. % woman might have been, as it were, everything tohim, and it might yet !resent him, in no conne@ion that any one seemedheld to recognise. 6f this was the case in these closing weeks it wasthe case more shar!ly on the occasion of the last offices rendered, inthe great grey #ondon cemetery, to what had been mortal, to what had been!recious, in his friend. The concourse at her grave was not numerous,but he saw himself treated as scarce more nearly concerned with it thanif there had been a thousand others. He was in short from this momentface to face with the fact that he was to !rofit e@traordinarily littleby the interest ?ay Bartram had taken in him. He couldnt Duite havesaid what he e@!ected, but he hadnt surely e@!ected this a!!roach to adouble !rivation. 3ot only had her interest failed him, but he seemed tofeel himself unattended""and for a reason he couldnt seie""by thedistinction, the dignity, the !ro!riety, if nothing else, of the manmarkedly bereaved. 6t was as if, in the view of society he had notIbeenI markedly bereaved, as if there still failed some sign or !roof ofit, and as if none the less his character could never be affirmed nor thedeficiency ever made u!. There were moments as the weeks went by when he

would have liked, by some almost aggressive act, to take his stand on theintimacy of his loss, in order that it ImightI be Duestioned and hisretort, to the relief of his s!irit, so recordedE but the moments of anirritation more hel!less followed fast on these, the moments during


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which, turning things over with a good conscience but with a barehorion, he found himself wondering if he oughtnt to have begun, so tos!eak, further back.

He found himself wondering indeed at many things, and this lasts!eculation had others to kee! it com!any. Chat could he have done,after all, in her lifetime, without giving them both, as it were, away

He couldnt have made known she was watching him, for that would have!ublished the su!erstition of the Beast. This was what closed his mouthnow""now that the Jungle had been thrashed to vacancy and that the Beasthad stolen away. 6t sounded too foolish and too flatE the difference forhim in this !articular, the e@tinction in his life of the element ofsus!ense, was such as in fact to sur!rise him. He could scarce have saidwhat the effect resembledE the abru!t cessation, the !ositive!rohibition, of music !erha!s, more than anything else, in some !lace alladjusted and all accustomed to sonority and to attention. 6f he could atany rate have conceived lifting the veil from his image at some moment ofthe !ast ;what had he done, after all, if not lift it to IherI< so to dothis to"day, to talk to !eo!le at large of the Jungle cleared and confideto them that he now felt it as safe, would have been not only to see them

listen as to a goodwifes tale, but really to hear himself tell one. Chatit !resently came to in truth was that !oor ?archer waded through hisbeaten grass, where no life stirred, where no breath sounded, where noevil eye seemed to gleam from a !ossible lair, very much as if vaguelylooking for the Beast, and still more as if acutely missing it. Hewalked about in an e@istence that had grown strangely more s!acious, and,sto!!ing fitfully in !laces where the undergrowth of life struck him ascloser, asked himself yearningly, wondered secretly and sorely, if itwould have lurked here or there. 6t would have at all events s!rungEwhat was at least com!lete was his belief in the truth itself of theassurance given him. The change from his old sense to his new wasabsolute and final$ what was to ha!!en had so absolutely and finallyha!!ened that he was as little able to know a fear for his future as to

know a ho!eE so absent in short was any Duestion of anything still tocome. He was to live entirely with the other Duestion, that of hisunidentified !ast, that of his having to see his fortune im!enetrablymuffled and masked.

The torment of this vision became then his occu!ationE he couldnt!erha!s have consented to live but for the !ossibility of guessing. 7hehad told him, his friend, not to guessE she had forbidden him, so far ashe might, to know, and she had even in a sort denied the !ower in him tolearn$ which were so many things, !recisely, to de!rive him of rest. 6twasnt that he wanted, he argued for fairness, that anything !ast anddone should re!eat itselfE it was only that he shouldnt, as ananticlima@, have been taken slee!ing so sound as not to be able to winback by an effort of thought the lost stuff of consciousness. Hedeclared to himself at moments that he would either win it back or havedone with consciousness for everE he made this idea his one motive infine, made it so much his !assion that none other, to com!are with it,seemed ever to have touched him. The lost stuff of consciousness becamethus for him as a strayed or stolen child to an una!!easable fatherE hehunted it u! and down very much as if he were knocking at doors andenDuiring of the !olice. This was the s!irit in which, inevitably, heset himself to travelE he started on a journey that was to be as long ashe could make itE it danced before him that, as the other side of theglobe couldnt !ossibly have less to say to him, it might, by a!ossibility of suggestion, have more. Before he Duitted #ondon, however,

he made a !ilgrimage to ?ay Bartrams grave, took his way to it throughthe endless avenues of the grim suburban necro!olis, sought it out in thewilderness of tombs, and, though he had come but for the renewal of theact of farewell, found himself, when he had at last stood by it, beguiled


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into long intensities. He stood for an hour, !owerless to turn away andyet !owerless to !enetrate the darkness of deathE fi@ing with his eyesher inscribed name and date, beating his forehead against the fact of thesecret they ke!t, drawing his breath, while he waited, as if some sensewould in !ity of him rise from the stones. He kneeled on the stones,however, in vainE they ke!t what they concealedE and if the face of thetomb did become a face for him it was because her two names became a !air

of eyes that didnt know him. He gave them a last long look, but no!alest light broke.

5H%PT4& L6

He stayed away, after this, for a yearE he visited the de!ths of %sia,s!ending himself on scenes of romantic interest, of su!erlative sanctityEbut what was !resent to him everywhere was that for a man who had knownwhat IheI had known the world was vulgar and vain. The state of mind in

which he had lived for so many years shone out to him, in refle@ion, as alight that coloured and refined, a light beside which the glow of the4ast was garish chea! and thin. The terrible truth was that he hadlost""with everything else""a distinction as wellE the things he sawcouldnt hel! being common when he had become common to look at them. Hewas sim!ly now one of them himself""he was in the dust, without a !eg forthe sense of differenceE and there were hours when, before the tem!les ofgods and the se!ulchres of kings, his s!irit turned for nobleness ofassociation to the barely discriminated slab in the #ondon suburb. Thathad become for him, and more intensely with time and distance, his onewitness of a !ast glory. 6t was all that was left to him for !roof or!ride, yet the !ast glories of Pharaohs were nothing to him as he thoughtof it. 7mall wonder then that he came back to it on the morrow of his

return. He was drawn there this time as irresistibly as the other, yetwith a confidence, almost, that was doubtless the effect of the manymonths that had ela!sed. He had lived, in s!ite of himself, into hischange of feeling, and in wandering over the earth had wandered, as mightbe said, from the circumference to the centre of his desert. He hadsettled to his safety and acce!ted !erforce his e@tinctionE figuring tohimself, with some colour, in the likeness of certain little old men heremembered to have seen, of whom, all meagre and wiened as they mightlook, it was related that they had in their time fought twenty duels orbeen loved by ten !rincesses. They indeed had been wondrous for otherswhile he was but wondrous for himselfE which, however, was e@actly thecause of his haste to renew the wonder by getting back, as he might !utit, into his own !resence. That had Duickened his ste!s and checked hisdelay. 6f his visit was !rom!t it was because he had been se!arated solong from the !art of himself that alone he now valued.

6ts accordingly not false to say that he reached his goal with a certainelation and stood there again with a certain assurance. The creaturebeneath the sod knew of his rare e@!erience, so that, strangely now, the!lace had lost for him its mere blankness of e@!ression. 6t met him inmildness""not, as before, in mockeryE it wore for him the air ofconscious greeting that we find, after absence, in things that haveclosely belonged to us and which seem to confess of themselves to theconne@ion. The !lot of ground, the graven tablet, the tended flowersaffected him so as belonging to him that he resembled for the hour a

contented landlord reviewing

the beast in the jungle - henry james.odt

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