y in you that he could
approach you without strengthening. He might have awaited her on the
sofa in his sitting-room, or might have stayed in bed and received her
in that situation. She was glad to be spared the sight of such
_penetralia,_ but it would have reminded her a little less that there
was no truth in him. This was the weariness of every fresh meeting; he
dealt out lies as he might the cards from the greasy old pack for the
game of diplomacy to which you were to sit down with him. The
inconvenience--as always happens in such cases--was not that you minded
what was false, but that you missed what was true. He might be ill, and
it might suit you to know it, but no contact with him, for this, could
ever be straight enough. Just so he even might die, but Kate fairly
wondered on what evidence of his own she would some day have to believe
it.

He had not at present come down from his room, which she knew to be
above the one they were in: he had already been out of the house,
though he would either, should she challenge him, deny it or present it
as a proof of his extremity. She had, however, by this time, quite
ceased to challenge him; not only, face to face with him, vain
irritation dropped, but he breathed upon the tragic consciousness in
such a way that after a moment nothing of it was left. The difficulty
was not less that he breathed in the same way upon the comic: she
almost believed that with this latter she might still have found a
foothold for clinging to him. He had ceased to be amusing--he was
really too inhuman. His perfect look, which had floated him so long,
was practically perfect still; but one had long since for every
occasion taken it for granted. Nothing could have better shown than the
actual how right one had been. He looked exactly as much as usual--all
pink and silver as to skin and hair, all straitness and starch as to
figure and dress--the man in the world least connected with anything
unpleasant. He was so particularly the English gentleman and the
fortunate, settled, normal person. Seen at a foreign _table d'hote,_
he suggested but one thing: "In what perfection England produces them!"
He had kind, safe eyes, and a voice which, for all its clean fulness,
told, in a manner, the happy history of its having never had once to
raise itself. Life had met him so, half-way, and had turned round so to
walk with him, placing a hand in his arm and fondly leaving him to
choose the pace. Those who knew