g the
thing off. He would have learned from Mrs. Server that I was not, as
regarded them, at all as others were; and thus his idea, the fruit of
that stimulation, could only be either to fathom, to felicitate, or--as
it were--to destroy me. What was at the same time obvious was that no
one of these attitudes would go quite of itself. The simple sight of him
as he quitted his chair to take one nearer my own brought home to me in
a flash--and much more than anything had yet done--the real existence in
him of the condition it was my private madness (none the less private
for Grace Brissenden's so limited glimpse of it,) to believe I had
coherently stated. Is not this small touch perhaps the best example I
can give of the intensity of amusement I had at last enabled my private
madness to yield me? I found myself owing it, from this time on and for
the rest of the evening, moments of the highest concentration.

Whatever there might have been for me of pain or doubt was washed
straight out by the special sensation of seeing how "clever" poor Long
not only would have to be, but confidently and actually _was_; inasmuch
as this apprehension seemed to put me in possession of his cleverness,
besides leaving me all my own. I made him welcome, I helped him to
another cigarette, I felt above all that I should enjoy him; my response
to his overture was, in other words, quickly enough to launch us. Yet I
fear I can do little justice to the pleasant suppressed tumult of
impression and reflection that, on my part, our ten minutes together
produced. The elements that mingled in it scarce admit of
discrimination. It was still more than previously a deep sense of being
justified. My interlocutor was for those ten minutes immeasurably
superior--superior, I mean, to himself--and he couldn't possibly have
become so save through the relation I had so patiently tracked. He faced
me there with another light than his own, spoke with another sound,
thought with another ease and understood with another ear. I should put
it that what came up between us was the mere things of the occasion,
were it not for the fine point to which, in my view, the things of the
occasion had been brought. While our eyes, at all events, on either
side, met serenely, and our talk, dealing with the idea, dealing with
the extraordinary special charm, of the social day now deepening to its
end, touched our companions successively, touched the manner in which
this one and that