Page:The Golden Bowl (Scribner, New York, 1909), Volume 1.djvu/368

THE GOLDEN BOWL now knew her—he didn't then say "Ah see what you've done: isn't it rather your own fault?" He behaved differently altogether: eminently distinguished himself—for she told him she had never seen him so universally distinguished—he yet distinguished her in her obscurity or in what was worse, her objective absurdity, and frankly invested her with her absolute value, surrounded her with all the importance of her wit. That wit, as discriminated from stature and complexion, a sense for "bridge" and a credit for pearls, could have importance was meanwhile but dimly perceived at Matcham; so that his "niceness" to her—she called it only niceness, but it brought tears into her eyes—had the greatness of a general as well as of a special demonstration.

"She understands," he said as a comment on all this to Mrs. Verver—"she understands all she needs to understand. She has taken her time, but she has at last made it out for herself: she sees how all we can desire is to give them the life they prefer, to surround them with the peace and quiet, and above all with the sense of security, most favourable to it. She can't of course very well put it to us that we have, so far as she is concerned, but to make the best of our circumstances; she can't say in so many words 'Don't think of me, for I too must make the best of mine: arrange as you can, only, and live as you must.' I don't get quite that from her, any more than I ask for it. But her tone and her whole manner mean nothing at all unless they mean that she trusts us to take as watchful, to take as artful, to take as tender care, in our way, as she so anxiously takes in hers. 338