Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/142

THE IVORY TOWER themselves over it, she fairly hunched her high shoulders higher for emphasis of her success. The more it might have embarrassed her to consider him without reserve the more she had this relief, as he took it, of her natural, her helpful blinking; so that what it came to really for her general advantage was that the fine closing of the eyes, the fine thing in her big face, but expressed effective scrutiny. Below her in stature—as various other men, for that matter, couldn't but be—he hardly came higher than her ear; and he for the shade of an instant struck himself as a small boy, literally not of man's estate, reporting, under some research, just to the amplest of mothers. He had reported to Mr. Betterman, so far as intent candour in him hadn't found itself distraught, and for the half hour had somehow affronted the immeasurable; but that didn't at all prevent his now quick sense of his never in his life having been so watched and waited upon by the uncharted infinite, or so subject to its operation—since infinites, at the rate he was sinking in, could apparently operate, and do it too without growing smaller for the purpose. He cast about, not at all upright on the small pink satin sofa to which he had unconsciously dropped; it was for him clearly to grow bigger, as everything about expressively smiled, smiled absolutely through the shadow cast by doctors and nurses again, in suggestion of; which, naturally, was what one would 128