Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 1.djvu/206

192 "Why, to that degree that she seems scarcely to think the child safe even with its infatuated daddy!"

Still on her feet beyond the table near which he sat, she had put up her parasol again, and she looked across at him from under it. Their eyes met, and he again felt himself in the presence of what, in them, shortly before, had been so deep, so exquisite. It represented something that no lapse could long quench—something that gave out the measureless white ray of a light steadily revolving. She could sometimes turn it away, but it was always somewhere; and now it covered him with a great cold lustre that made everything for the moment look hard and ugly—made him also feel the chill of a complication for which he had not allowed. He had had plenty of complications in life, but he had likewise had ways of dealing with them that were in general clever, easy, masterly indeed often really pleasant. He got up nervously: there would be nothing pleasant in any way of dealing with this one.