Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/313

THE IVORY TOWER this under all the first flush of what I have called his own exhilaration. He hasn't then committed himself, in the vulgar sense, at all—had only committed himself, that is, to the appearance of being interested and charmed: his imaginative expansion for that matter being naturally too great to permit for the moment of particular concentration or limitations. But isn't his incipient fear of beginning to be, of becoming, such another example, to put it comprehensively, as Rosanna, doesn't this proceed precisely from the stir in him of certain disconcerting, complicating, in fact if they go a little further quite blighting, wonderments in respect to Cissy's possibilities? She throws her weight with him into the happy view of his own; which is what he likes her, wants her, at first encourages her to do, lending himself to it while he feels himself, as it were, all over. Mrs. Bradham, all the while, backs her up and backs him up, and is in general as crude and hard and blatant, as vulgar is what it essentially comes to, in her exhibited desire to bring about their engagement, as is exactly required for producing on him just the wrong effect. Gray's tone to the girl becomes, again to simplify: "Oh yes, it's all right that you should be rich, should have all the splendid things of this world; but I don't see, I'm not sure, of its being in the least right that I should—while I seem to be making out more and more, round me, how so many of them are come by." 299