were scenes in which a transcendent intelligence had after all no
application, and that, in short, any preposterous acuteness might easily
suffer among them such a loss of dignity as overtakes the newspaper-man
kicked out. We existed, all of us together, to be handsome and happy, to
be really what we looked--since we looked tremendously well; to be that
and neither more nor less, so not discrediting by musty secrets and
aggressive doubts our high privilege of harmony and taste. We were
concerned only with what was bright and open, and the expression that
became us all was, at worst, that of the shaded but gratified eye, the
air of being forgivingly dazzled by too much lustre.

Mrs. Server, at table, was out of my range, but I wondered if, had she
not been so, I shouldn't now have been moved to recognise in her fixed
expressiveness nothing more than our common reciprocal tribute. Hadn't
everyone my eyes could at present take in a fixed expressiveness? Was I
not very possibly myself, on this ground of physiognomic congruity, more
physiognomic than anyone else? I made my excellence, on the chance, go
as far as it would to cover my temporary doubts. I saw Mrs. Brissenden,
in another frock, naturally, and other jewels from those of the evening
before; but she gave me, across the board, no more of a look than if she
had quite done with me. It struck me that she felt she _had_ done--that,
as to the subject of our discussion, she deemed her case by this time
so established as to offer comparatively little interest. I couldn't
come to her to renew the discussion; I could only come to her to make my
submission; and it doubtless appeared to her--to do her justice--more
delicate not to triumph over me in advance. The profession of joy,
however, reigned in her handsome face none the less largely for my not
having the benefit of it. If I seem to falsify my generalisation by
acknowledging that her husband, on the same side, made no more public
profession of joy than usual, I am still justified by the fact that
there was something in a manner decorative even in Brissenden's wonted
gloom. He reminded me at this hour more than ever of some fine old
Velasquez or other portrait--a presentation of ugliness and melancholy
that might have been royal. There was as little of the common in his
dry, distinguished patience as in the case I had made out for him.
Blighted and ensconed, he looked at it over the rigid convention, his
peculiar perfecti