hose were
men and women who had been other than phantoms; recollections of the
words she listened to, assented to, replied to, displayed the gulfs she
had crossed. And nevertheless her brain was as quick as his to press
forward to pluck the themes which would demonstrate her mental vividness
and at least indicate her force of character. The splendour of the man
quite extinguished, or over-brightened, her sense of personal charm; she
set fire to her brain to shine intellectually, treating the tale of her
fair face as a childish tale that might have a grain of truth in it,
some truth, a very little, and that little nearly worthless, merely
womanly, a poor charm of her sex. The intellectual endowment was
rarer: still rarer the moral audacity. O, to match this man's embracing
discursiveness! his ardour, his complacent energy, the full strong sound
he brought out of all subjects! He struck, and they rang. There was a
bell in everything for him; Nature gave out her cry, and significance
was on all sides of the universe; no dead stuff, no longer any
afflicting lumpishness. His brain was vivifying light. And how humane
he was! how supremely tolerant! Where she had really thought instead of
flippantly tapping at the doors of thought, or crying vagrantly for an
echo, his firm footing in the region thrilled her; and where she had
felt deeper than fancifully, his wise tenderness overwhelmed. Strange to
consider: with all his precious gifts, which must make the gift of
life thrice dear to him, he was fearless. Less by what he said than by
divination she discerned that he knew not fear. If for only that, she
would have hung to him like his shadow. She could have detected a brazen
pretender. A meaner mortal vaunting his great stores she would have
written down coxcomb. Her social training and natural perception raised
her to a height to measure the bombastical and distinguish it from the
eloquently lofty. He spoke of himself, as the towering Alp speaks out at
a first view, bidding that which he was be known. Fearless, confident,
able, he could not but be, as he believed himself, indomitable. She who
was this man's mate would consequently wed his possessions, including
courage. Clotilde at once reached the conclusion of her having it in
an equal degree. Was she not displaying it? The worthy people of the
company stared, as she now perceived, and she was indifferent; her
relatives were present without disturbing her exaltation. She wheele