ingular law their tone--he
scarce knew what to call it--had never been so bland. Not to talk of
what they _might_ have talked of drove them to other ground; it was as
if they used a perverse insistence to make up what they ignored. They
concealed their pursuit of the irrelevant by the charm of their manner;
they took precautions for the courtesy they had formerly left to come
of itself; often, when he had quitted her, he stopped short, walking
off, with the aftersense of their change. He would have described their
change--had he so far faced it as to describe it--by their being so
damned civil. That had even, with the intimate, the familiar at the
point to which they had brought them, a touch almost of the droll. What
danger had there ever been of their becoming rude--after each had long
since made the other so tremendously tender? Such were the things he
asked himself when he wondered what in particular he most feared.

Yet all the while too the tension had its charm--such being the
interest of a creature who could bring one back to her by such
different roads. It was her talent for life again; which found in her a
difference for the differing time. She didn't give their tradition up;
she but made of it something new. Frankly moreover she had never been
more agreeable nor in a way--to put it prosaically--better company: he
felt almost as if he were knowing her on that defined basis--which he
even hesitated whether to measure as reduced or as extended; as if at
all events he were admiring her as she was probably admired by people
she met "out." He hadn't in fine reckoned that she would still have
something fresh for him; yet this was what she had--that on the top of
a tram in the Borough he felt as if he were next her at dinner. What a
person she would be if they _had_ been rich--with what a genius for the
so-called great life, what a presence for the so-called great house,
what a grace for the so-called great positions! He might regret at
once, while he was about it, that they weren't princes or billionaires.
She had treated him on their Christmas to a softness that had struck
him at the time as of the quality of fine velvet, meant to fold thick,
but stretched a little thin; at present, however, she gave him the
impression of a contact multitudinous as only the superficial can be.
She had throughout never a word for what went on at home. She came out
of that and she returned to it, but her nearest reference was the look