Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/334

THE IVORY TOWER above all, of Cissy's really interesting intelligence and "subtlety". She refuses the gift, very gently and pleadingly, but as it seems to him really pretty well finally—refuses it as not relevant or proportionate or congruous to any relation in which they yet stand to each other, and as oh ever so much overexpressing any niceness she may have shown in Europe. She does, in doing this, exactly what he has felt at the back of his head that she would really do, and what he likes her for doing—the effect of which is that she has furthered her interest with him decidedly more (as she of course says to herself) than if she had taken it. He is left with it for the moment on his hands, and what I want is that he shall the next thing find himself, in revulsion, in reaction, there being for him no question of selling it again etc., finds himself, I say, offering it to Mrs. Bradham herself, who swallows it without winking. Yet, in a way, this little history of the pearls, of her not having had them, and of his after a fashion owing her a certain compensation for that, owing her something she can accept, is there between him and my young person. They figure again between them, humorously, freely, ironically—the girl being of an irony!—in their appearances on Mrs. Bradham's person, to whose huge possession of ornament they none the less conspicuously add.

But my point here is above all that Gray exactly 320