Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/321

THE IVORY TOWER how they shall come yet to concern her. Awfully interesting and attractive, as one says, to mark the point (such a Joint this!) at which the case begins to glimmer for Gray about her, as it has begun to glimmer for him about Horton. I make out here, so far as I catch the tip of the tail of it, such an interesting connection and dependence, for what I may roughly call Gray's state of mind, as to what is taking place within Cissy, so to speak. Since I speak of the most primitive statement of it possible he catches the moment at which she begins to say to herself "But if Horton, if he, is going to be rich?" as a positive arrest, say significant warning or omen, in his own nearer approach to her; which takes on thereby a portentous, a kind of ominous and yet enjoyable air of evidence as to his own likelihood, at this rate, of getting poor. He catches her not asking herself withal, at least then, "How is Horton going to be rich, how, at such a rate, has it come on, and what does it mean?"—it is only the "If Horton, oh if?" that he comes up against; it's as if he comes up against, as well, some wondrous implication in it of "If, if, if Mr. Gray is, 'in such a funny way,' going to be poor?" He sees her there, seeing at the same time that it's as near as she yet gets; as near perhaps even—for this splendid apprehension sort of begins to take place in him—as she's going to allow herself to get; and after the first chill of it, shock of it, pain of 307