Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/324

THE IVORY TOWER manner corresponding to that apprehension in Gray of her confidence, which I have just been sketchily noting. The one disinterested thing in Horton, that is, consists of his being so attached to her that he really cares for her freedom, cares for her doing what on the whole she most wants to, if it will but come as she wants it, by the operation, the evolution, so to say, of her clear preference. He has somehow within him a sense that anyway, whatever happens, they shall not fail of being "friends" after all. I see myself wanting to have Gray come up against some conclusive sign of how things are at last between them—though I say "at last" as if he has had much other light as to how such things have been, precedently. I don't want him to have had much other light, though he needs of course to have had some; there being people enough to tell him, he being so in the circle of talk, reference, gossip; but with his own estimate of the truth of ever so much of the chatter in general, and of that chatter in particular, taking its course. What I seem to see just in this connection is that he has "believed" so far as to take it that she has "cared" for his friend in the previous time, but that Horton hasn't really at all cared for her, keeping himself in reserve as it is of his essence to do, and in particular (this absolutely known to Gray) never having wholly given up his views on Rosanna. Gray believes that he hasn't, at any rate, and this helps 310