Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/322

THE IVORY TOWER it (because I want him to be at the point at which he has that) fades a little away for him, he emerging or shaking himself out of it, the beautiful way in which it falls into the general ironic apprehension, imagination, appropriation, of the Whole, becomes for him the fact about it. She has them, each on his side, there in her balance—and this is between them, between him and her; I must have prepared everything right for its being oh such a fine moment. What I want to do of course is to get out of this particular situation all it can give; what it most gives being, to the last point, the dramatic quality, intensity, force, current or whatever, of Gray's apprehension of it, once this is determined, and of course wondering interest in it—as a light, so to speak, on both of the persons concerned. What I see is that she gives him the measure, as it were, of Morton's successful proceeding—and does so, in a sort, without positively having it herself, or truly wanting to have it beyond the fact that it is success, is promise and prospect of acquisition on a big scale. What it comes to is that he finds her believing in Horton just at the time and in proportion as he has found himself ceasing to believe, so far as the latter's disinterestedness is concerned. No better, no more vivid illustration of the force of the money-power and money-prestige rises there before him, innumerably as other examples assault him from all round. The effect on her 308