had force.
It pressed upon him hard, and all round, assuredly, this attribution of
power. Everyone had need of one's power, whereas one's own need, at the
best, would have seemed to be but some trick for not communicating it.
The effect of a reserve so merely, so meanly defensive would in most
cases, beyond question, sufficiently discredit the cause; wherefore,
though it was complicating to be perpetually treated as an infinite
agent, the outrage was not the greatest of which a brave man might
complain. Complaint, besides, was a luxury, and he dreaded the
imputation of greed. The other, the constant imputation, that of
being able to "do," would have no ground if he hadn't been, to start
with--this was the point--provably luxurious. His lips, somehow, were
closed--and by a spring connected moreover with the action of his eyes
themselves. The latter showed him what he had done, showed him where he
had come out; quite at the top of his hill of difficulty, the tall sharp
spiral round which he had begun to wind his ascent at the age of twenty,
and the apex of which was a platform looking down, if one would, on
the kingdoms of the earth and with standing-room for but half-a-dozen
others.

His eyes, in any case, now saw Mrs. Rance approach with an instant
failure to attach to the fact any grossness of avidity of Mrs. Rance's
own--or at least to descry any triumphant use even for the luridest
impression of her intensity. What was virtually supreme would be her
vision of his having attempted, by his desertion of the library, to
mislead her--which in point of fact barely escaped being what he had
designed. It was not easy for him, in spite of accumulations fondly and
funnily regarded as of systematic practice, not now to be ashamed; the
one thing comparatively easy would be to gloss over his course. The
billiard-room was NOT, at the particular crisis, either a natural or a
graceful place for the nominally main occupant of so large a house to
retire to--and this without prejudice, either, to the fact that his
visitor wouldn't, as he apprehended, explicitly make him a scene. Should
she frankly denounce him for a sneak he would simply go to pieces; but
he was, after an instant, not afraid of that. Wouldn't she rather, as
emphasising their communion, accept and in a manner exploit the anomaly,
treat it perhaps as romantic or possibly even as comic?--show at least
that they needn't mind even though the vast table, draped in brown
ho