s going and paused only when it was
quite vertiginous. Here she hung a moment as in the glare of the upper
blue; which was but the glare--what else could it be?--of the vast and
magnificent attention of both her auditors, hushed, on their side, in
the splendor she emitted. She had at last to steady herself, and
she scarce knew afterward at what rate or in what way she had still
inimitably come down--her own eyes fixed all the while on the very
figure of her achievement. She had sacrificed her mother on the
altar--proclaimed her as false and cruel: and if that didn't "fix" Mr.
Pitman, as he would have said--well, it was all she could do. But the
cost of her action already somehow came back to her with increase; the
dear gaunt man fairly wavered, to her sight, in the glory of it, as if
signalling at her, with wild gleeful arms, from some mount of safety,
while the massive lady just spread and spread like a rich fluid a bit
helplessly spilt. It was really the outflow of the poor woman's
honest response, into which she seemed to melt, and Julia scarce
distinguished the two apart even for her taking gracious leave of
each. "Good-bye, Mrs. Drack; I'm awfully happy to have met you"--like
as not it was for this she had grasped Mr. Pitman's hand. And then
to him or to her, it didn't matter which, "Good-bye, dear good Mr.
Pitman--hasn't it been nice after so long?"

II

Julia floated even to her own sense swan-like away--she left in her
wake their fairly stupefied submission: it was as if she had, by an
exquisite authority, now _placed_ them, each for each, and they would
have nothing to do but be happy together. Never had she so exulted
as on this ridiculous occasion in the noted items of her beauty. _Le
compte y etait_, as they used to say in Paris--every one of them, for
her immediate employment, was there; and there was something in it
after all. It didn't necessarily, this sum of thumping little figures,
imply charm--especially for "refined" people: nobody knew better than
Julia that inexpressible charm and quotable "charms" (quotable
like prices, rates, shares, or whatever, the things they dealt in
down-town) are two distinct categories; the safest thing for the
latter being, on the whole, that it might include the former, and the
great strength of the former being that it might perfectly dispense
with the latter. Mrs. Drack was not refined, not the least little bit;
but what would be the case with Murray Brush now--aft