Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/333

THE IVORY TOWER exactly got it! I keep in mind that Mrs. Bradham wants him to marry her—this amount of "disinterestedness" giving the measure of Mrs. B. at her most exalted "best". Wherewith, to consolidate this, her delicacy being capable—well, of what we shall see, she works of course to exaggeration the idea of his "recognising" how nice Cissy was, over there in the other time, to his poor sick stepfather, who himself so recognised it, who wrote to her so charmingly a couple of times "about it", after her return to America and quite shortly before his death. Gray "knows about this", and of course will quite see what she means. Therefore wouldn't it be nice for Gray to give her, Cissy, something really beautiful and valuable and socially helpful to her—as of course he can't give her money, which is what would be most helpful. Under this hustlement, in fine, and with a sense, born of his goodnature, his imagination, and his own delicacy, such a very different affair, of what Gussie Bradham has done for him, by her showing, he finds himself in for having bought a very rare single row of pearls, such as a girl, in New York at least, may happily wear, and presenting it to our young person as the token of recognition that Mrs. Bradham has imagined for them. The beauty in which, I see, is that it may be illustrational in more ways than one—illustrational of the hustle, of the length Gray has "appreciatively" let himself go, and, 319