Page:Gissing - The Nether World, vol. III, 1889.djvu/94

 plane of common experience and made actual to him the feelings he knew only in romantic story. He could not stir, lest the slightest sound should jar on her speaking. His breath rose visibly upon the chill air, but the discomfort of the room was as indifferent to him as to his companion. Clara rose, as if impelled by mental anguish; she stretched out her hand to the mantelpiece, and so stood, between him and the light, her admirable figure designed on a glimmering background.

“I know why you say nothing,” she continued, abruptly but without resentment. “You cannot use words of sympathy which would be anything but formal, and you prefer to let me understand that. It is like you. Oh, you mustn’t think I mean the phrase as a reproach. Anything but that. I mean that you were always honest, and time hasn’t changed you—in that.” A slight, very slight, tremor on the close. “I’d rather you behaved to me like your old self. A sham sympathy would drive me mad.”

“I said nothing,” he replied, "only because words seemed meaningless.”

“Not only that. You feel for me, I know,