Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/311

THE IVORY TOWER process throughout the action. The determination of her interest toward him—that then is a Joint. And let me make the point just here that at first he has nothing but terror, but horror, of seeing himself affected as Rosanna has been by her own situation—from the moment, that is, he begins to take in that she is so affected. He takes this in betimes from various signs—before that passes between them which gives him her case in the full and lucid way in which he comes to have it. She gives it to him presently—but at first as her own simply, holding her hand entirely from intimating that his need be at all like it; as she must do, for that matter, given the fact that it is really through her action that he was brought over to see his uncle. She thinks her feelings about her own case right and inevitable for herself; but I want to make it an interesting and touching inconsistency in her that she desires not to inspire him, in respect to his circumstances, with any correspondingly justified sense. Definite is it that what he learns, he learns not the least mite from herself, though after a while he comes quite to challenge her on it, but from Davey Bradham, so far as he learns it, for the most part, concretely and directly—as many other impressions as I can suggest helping besides. I want him at all events to have a full large clear moment or season of exhilaration, of something like intoxication, over the change in his conditions, 297