Page:The Wings of the Dove (New York, Charles Scribners Sons, 1902), Volume 2.djvu/157

 so patient a surrender. Gracefully, respectfully, consummately enough—always with hands in position and the look, in his thick, neat, white hair, smooth, fat face and black, professional, almost theatrical eyes, as of some famous tenor grown too old to make love, but with an art still to make money—did he, on occasion, convey to her that she was, of all the clients of his glorious career, the one in whom his interest was most personal and paternal. The others had come in the way of business, but for her his sentiment was special. Confidence rested thus on her completely believing that: there was nothing of which she felt more sure. It passed between them every time they conversed; he was abysmal, but this intimacy lived on the surface. He had taken his place already for her among those who were to see her through, and meditation ranked him, in the constant perspective, for the final function, side by side with poor Susie—whom she was now pitying more than ever for having to be herself so sorry and to say so little about it. Eugenic had the general tact of a residuary legatee—which was a character that could be definitely worn; whereas she could see Susie, in the event of her death, in no character at all, Susie being insistently, exclusively concerned in her mere make-shift duration. This principle, for that matter, Milly at present, with a renewed flare of fancy, felt that she should herself have liked to believe in. Eugenic had really done for her more than he probably knew—he didn't after 147