sion is a
charm upon the faint-hearted through love: it unwinds, unwills them.
Nataly resolved fixedly, that there must be a day for speaking; and
she had her moral sustainment in the resolve; she had also a tormenting
consciousness of material support in the thought, that the day was
not present, was possibly distant, might never arrive. Would Victor's
release come sooner? And that was a prospect bearing resemblance to
hopes of the cure of a malady through a sharp operation.

These were matters going on behind the curtain; as wholly vital to her,
and with him at times almost as dominant, as the spiritual in memory,
when flesh has left but its shining track in dust of a soul outwritten;
and all their talk related to the purchase of furniture, the expeditions
to Lakelands, music, public affairs, the pardonable foibles of
friends created to amuse their fellows, operatic heroes and heroines,
exhibitions of pictures, the sorrows of Crowned Heads, so serviceable
ever to mankind as an admonition to the ambitious, a salve to the
envious!--in fine, whatsoever can entertain or affect the most social
of couples, domestically without a care to appearance. And so far they
partially--dramatically--deceived themselves by imposing on the world
while they talked and duetted; for the purchase of furniture from a
flowing purse is a cheerful occupation; also a City issuing out of
hospital, like this poor City of London, inspires good citizens to
healthy activity. But the silence upon what they were most bent on, had
the sinister effect upon Victor, of obscuring his mental hold of the
beloved woman, drifting her away from him. In communicating Fenellan's
news through the lawyer Carling of Mrs. Burman's intentions, he was
aware that there was an obstacle to his being huggingly genial,
even candidly genial with her, until he could deal out further
news, corroborative and consecutive, to show the action of things as
progressive. Fenellan had sunk into his usual apathy:--and might plead
the impossibility of his moving faster than the woman professing to
transform herself into, beneficence out of malignity;--one could
hear him saying the words! Victor had not seen him since last Concert
evening, and he deemed it as well to hear the words Fenellan's mouth
had to say. He called at an early hour of the Westward tidal flow at the
Insurance Office looking over the stormy square of the first of Seamen.

CHAPTER XIII. THE LATEST OF MRS. BURMAN