Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/320

THE IVORY TOWER settled: as to which I needn't insist further, it's there; what I want is there; I've only to pull it out: it's all there, heaped up and pressed together and awaiting the properest hand. So much just now for that.

As to Cissy Foy meanwhile, the case seems to me to clear up and clear up to the last perfection; or to be destined and committed so to do, at any rate, as one presses it with the right pressure. How shall I put it for the moment, her case, in the very simplest and most rudimentary terms? She sees the improvement in Horton's situation, she assists at it, it gives her pleasure, it even to a certain extent causes her wonder, but a wonder which the pleasure only perches on, so to speak, and converts to its use; so does the vision appeal to her and hold her of the exercise on his part, the more vivid exercise than any she has yet been able to enjoy an exhibition of, of the ability and force, the doing and man-of-action quality, as to the show of which he has up to now been so hampered. She likes his success at last, plainly, and he has it from her that she likes it; she likes to let him know that she likes it, and we have her for the time in contemplation, as it were, of these two beautiful cases of possession and acquisition, out of which indeed poor little impecunious she gets as yet no direct advantage, but which are somehow together there for her with a kind of glimmering looming option well before her as to 306