a shrine, and as to
this she must look out for her chance. She lived with her letter, before
any chance came, a month, and even after a month it had mysteries for
her that she couldn't meet. What did it mean, what did it represent, to
what did it correspond in his imagination or his soul? What was behind
it, what was beyond it, what was, in the deepest depth, within it? She
said to herself that with these questions she was under no obligation to
deal. There was an explanation of them that, for practical purposes,
would do as well as another: he had found in his marriage a happiness so
much greater than, in the distress of his dilemma, he had been able to
take heart to believe, that he now felt he owed her a token of gratitude
for having kept him in the straight path. That explanation, I say, she
could throw off; but no explanation in the least mattered: what
determined her was the simple strength of her impulse to respond. The
passion for which what had happened had made no difference, the passion
that had taken this into account before as well as after, found here an
issue that there was nothing whatever to choke. It found even a relief
to which her imagination immensely contributed. Would she act upon his
offer? She would act with secret rapture. To have as her own something
splendid that he had given her, of which the gift had been his signed
desire, would be a greater joy than the greatest she had supposed to be
left to her, and she felt that till the sense of this came home she had
even herself not known what burned in her successful stillness. It was
an hour to dream of and watch for; to be patient was to draw out the
sweetness. She was capable of feeling it as an hour of triumph, the
triumph of everything in her recent life that had not held up its head.
She moved there in thought--in the great rooms she knew; she should be
able to say to herself that, for once at least, her possession was as
complete as that of either of the others whom it had filled only with
bitterness. And a thousand times yes--her choice should know no scruple:
the thing she should go down to take would be up to the height of her
privilege. The whole place was in her eyes, and she spent for weeks her
private hours in a luxury of comparison and debate. It should be one of
the smallest things because it should be one she could have close to
her; and it should be one of the finest because it was in the finest he
saw his symbol. She said to hersel