e power engendered and applied, the necessary triumph of all
operations. A dim explanation of phenomena once vivid must at all events
for the moment suffice us; it being obviously no account of the
matter to throw on our friend's amiability alone the weight of the
demonstration of his economic history. Amiability, of a truth, is an
aid to success; it has even been known to be the principle of large
accumulations; but the link, for the mind, is none the less fatally
missing between proof, on such a scale, of continuity, if of nothing
more insolent, in one field, and accessibility to distraction in every
other. Variety of imagination--what is that but fatal, in the world of
affairs, unless so disciplined as not to be distinguished from
monotony? Mr. Verver then, for a fresh, full period, a period betraying,
extraordinarily, no wasted year, had been inscrutably monotonous
behind an iridescent cloud. The cloud was his native envelope--the soft
looseness, so to say, of his temper and tone, not directly expressive
enough, no doubt, to figure an amplitude of folds, but of a quality
unmistakable for sensitive feelers. He was still reduced, in fine, to
getting his rare moments with himself by feigning a cynicism. His real
inability to maintain the pretence, however, had perhaps not often been
better instanced than by his acceptance of the inevitable to-day--his
acceptance of it on the arrival, at the end of a quarter-of-an hour, of
that element of obligation with which he had all the while known he must
reckon. A quarter-of-an-hour of egoism was about as much as he,
taking one situation with another, usually got. Mrs. Rance opened the
door--more tentatively indeed than he himself had just done; but on
the other hand, as if to make up for this, she pushed forward even more
briskly on seeing him than he had been moved to do on seeing nobody.
Then, with force, it came home to him that he had, definitely, a week
before, established a precedent. He did her at least that justice--it
was a kind of justice he was always doing someone. He had on the
previous Sunday liked to stop at home, and he had exposed himself
thereby to be caught in the act. To make this possible, that is, Mrs.
Rance had only had to like to do the same--the trick was so easily
played. It had not occurred to him to plan in any way for her
absence--which would have destroyed, somehow, in principle, the
propriety of his own presence. If persons under his roof hadn't a ri