Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/349

THE IVORY TOWER disaster inflicted on another by Horton. What I want a bit is all contained in Gray's question, afterwards determined, not absolutely present at the moment, of whether this fact has not been a feigned or simulated one, not a genuine gulf of accident, but an appeal for relinquishment practised on Gray by the latter's liability to believe that the cause is genuine. I clutch the idea of this determinant of rightness of suspicion being one with the circumstance that Cissy in a sort of thereupon manner "takes up" with Horton, instead of not doing so, as figures to Gray as discernible if Horton were merely minus. Is it cleared up for Gray that the cause is not genuine?—does he get, or does he seek, any definite light on this? Does he tell any one, that is does he tell Rosanna of the incident (though I want the thing of proportions bigger than those of a mere incident)—does he put it to her, in short does he take her into his confidence about it? I think I see that he does to this extent, that she is the only person to whom he speaks, but that he then speaks with a kind of transparent and, as it were, (as it is in her sight) "sublime" dissimulation. Yes, I think that's the way I want it—that he tells her what has happened, tells it to her as having happened, as a statement of what he has done or means to do—perhaps his mind isn't even yet made up to it; whereby I seem to get a very interesting passage of drama and another very 335