cious? That necessity of making
the best was the instinct--as he indeed himself knew--of a man somehow
aware that if he let go at one place he should let go everywhere. If he
took off his hand, the hand that at least helped to hold it together,
the whole queer fabric that built him in would fall away in a minute
and admit the light. It was really a matter of nerves; it was exactly
because he was nervous that he _could_ go straight; yet if that
condition should increase he must surely go wild. He was walking in
short on a high ridge, steep down on either side, where the
proprieties--once he could face at all remaining there--reduced
themselves to his keeping his head. It was Kate who had so perched him,
and there came up for him at moments, as he found himself planting one
foot exactly before another, a sensible sharpness of irony as to her
management of him. It wasn't that she had put him in danger--to be in
real danger with her would have had another quality. There glowed for
him in fact a kind of rage at what he wasn't having; an exasperation, a
resentment, begotten truly by the very impatience of desire, in respect
to his postponed and relegated, his so extremely manipulated state. It
was beautifully done of her, but what was the real meaning of it unless
that he was perpetually bent to her will? His idea from the first, from
the very first of his knowing her, had been to be, as the French called
it, _bon prince_ with her, mindful of the good humour and generosity,
the contempt, in the matter of confidence, for small outlays and small
savings, that belonged to the man who wasn't generally afraid. There
were things enough, goodness knew--for it was the moral of his
plight--that he couldn't afford; but what had had a charm for him if
not the notion of living handsomely, to make up for it, in another way?
of not at all events reading the romance of his existence in a cheap
edition. All he had originally felt in her came back to him, was indeed
actually as present as ever--how he had admired and envied what he
called to himself her pure talent for life, as distinguished from his
own, a poor weak thing of the occasion, amateurishly patched up; only
it irritated him the more that this was exactly what was now, ever so
characteristically, standing out in her.

It was thanks to her pure talent for life, verily, that he was just
where he was and that he was above all just _how_ he was. The proof of
a decent reaction in him ag