iven not to save
it--into the fathomless sea, or rather even it was like the sacrifice
of something sentient and throbbing, something that, for the spiritual
ear, might have been audible as a faint far wail. This was the sound he
cherished when alone in the stillness of his rooms. He sought and
guarded the stillness, so that it might prevail there till the
inevitable sounds of life, once more, comparatively coarse and harsh,
should smother and deaden it--doubtless by the same process with which
they would officiously heal the ache in his soul that was somehow one
with it. It moreover deepened the sacred hush that he couldn't
complain. He had given poor Kate her freedom.

The great and obvious thing, as soon as she stood there on the occasion
we have already named, was that she was now in high possession of it.
This would have marked immediately the difference--had there been
nothing else to do it--between their actual terms and their other
terms, the character of their last encounter in Venice. That had been
_his_ idea, whereas her present step was her own; the few marks they
had in common were, from the first moment, to his conscious vision,
almost pathetically plain. She was as grave now as before; she looked
around her, to hide it, as before; she pretended, as before, in an air
in which her words at the moment itself fell flat, to an interest in
the place and a curiosity about his "things"; there was a recall in the
way in which, after she had failed a little to push up her veil
symmetrically and he had said she had better take it off altogether,
she had acceded to his suggestion before the glass. It was just these
things that were vain; and what was real was that his fancy figured her
after the first few minutes as literally now providing the element of
reassurance which had previously been his care. It was she, supremely,
who had the presence of mind. She made indeed for that matter very
prompt use of it. "You see I've not hesitated this time to break your
seal."

She had laid on the table from the moment of her coming in the long
envelope, substantially filled, which he had sent her enclosed in
another of still ampler make. He had however not looked at it--his
belief being that he wished never again to do so; besides which it had
happened to rest with its addressed side up. So he "saw" nothing, and
it was only into her eyes that her remark made him look, declining any
approach to the object indicated. "It's not