than the belted
and trinketed Eliza) and with a conviction of her own as to what
their stay is going to amount to. On the basis of Lorraine's similar
conviction about ours it would seem then that we ought to meet for an
esoteric revel; yet somehow it doesn't come off. Sometimes I think I'm
quite wrong and that he can't really be a child of light: we should in
this case either have seen him collapse or have discovered what inwardly
sustains him. We ARE ourselves inwardly collapsing--there's no doubt of
that: in spite of the central fires, as Lorraine says somebody in Boston
used to say somebody said, from which we're fed. From what central fires
is Temple nourished? I give it up; for, on the point, again and again,
of desperately stopping him in the street to ask him, I recoil as often
in terror. He may be only plotting to MAKE me do it--so that he may give
me away in his paper!

"Remember, he's a mere little frisking prize ass; stick to that, cling
to it, make it your answer to everything: it's all you now know and all
you need to know, and you'll be as firm on it as on a rock!" This
is what I said to poor Peg, on the subject of Harry Goward, before I
started, in the glorious impulse of the moment, five nights ago, for New
York; and, with no moment now to spare, yet wishing not to lose my
small silver clue, I just put it here for one of the white pebbles, or
whatever they were, that Hop o' my Thumb, carried off to the forest,
dropped, as he went, to know his way back. I was carried off the other
evening in a whirlwind, which has not even yet quite gone down, though
I am now at home and recovering my breath; and it will interest me
vividly, when I have more freedom of mind, to live over again these
strange, these wild successions. But a few rude notes, and only of the
first few hours of my adventure, must for the present suffice. The mot,
of the whole thing, as Lorraine calls it, was that at last, in a flash,
we recognized what we had so long been wondering about--what supreme
advantage we've been, all this latter time in particular, "holding out"
for.

Lorraine had put it once again in her happy way only a few weeks
previous; we were "saving up," she said--and not meaning at all our
poor scant dollars and cents, though we've also kept hold of some of
THEM--for an exercise of strength and a show of character that would
make us of a sudden some unmistakable sign. We should just meet it
rounding a corner as with the rus