ealized that it
was the last outrage upon Leonora. But the real point was his entire
unconsciousness. He had gone with her into that dark park with no
quickening of the pulse, with no desire for the intimacy of solitude.
He had gone, intending to talk about polo-ponies, and tennis-racquets;
about the temperament of the reverend Mother at the convent she had left
and about whether her frock for a party when they got home should be
white or blue. It hadn't come into his head that they would talk about a
single thing that they hadn't always talked about; it had not even
come into his head that the tabu which extended around her was not
inviolable. And then, suddenly, that--He was very careful to assure me
that at that time there was no physical motive about his declaration. It
did not appear to him to be a matter of a dark night and a propinquity
and so on. No, it was simply of her effect on the moral side of his life
that he appears to have talked. He said that he never had the slightest
notion to enfold her in his arms or so much as to touch her hand. He
swore that he did not touch her hand. He said that they sat, she at one
end of the bench, he at the other; he leaning slightly towards her
and she looking straight towards the light of the Casino, her face
illuminated by the lamps. The expression upon her face he could only
describe as "queer". At another time, indeed, he made it appear that he
thought she was glad. It is easy to imagine that she was glad, since
at that time she could have had no idea of what was really happening.
Frankly, she adored Edward Ashburnham. He was for her, in everything
that she said at that time, the model of humanity, the hero, the
athlete, the father of his country, the law-giver. So that for her,
to be suddenly, intimately and overwhelmingly praised must have been
a matter for mere gladness, however overwhelming it were. It must have
been as if a god had approved her handiwork or a king her loyalty. She
just sat still and listened, smiling. And it seemed to her that all the
bitterness of her childhood, the terrors of her tempestuous father, the
bewailings of her cruel-tongued mother were suddenly atoned for. She
had her recompense at last. Because, of course, if you come to figure
it out, a sudden pouring forth of passion by a man whom you regard as a
cross between a pastor and a father might, to a woman, have the aspect
of mere praise for good conduct. It wouldn't, I mean, appear at all in