hat the situation contained all
the elements of an explosion, he had often enough, in the range of his
personal experience, seen just such combinations subside into
harmlessness. Still, Dorset's spasmodic temper, and his wife's reckless
disregard of appearances, gave the situation a peculiar insecurity; and
it was less from the sense of any special relation to the case than from
a purely professional zeal, that Selden resolved to guide the pair to
safety. Whether, in the present instance, safety for either lay in
repairing so damaged a tie, it was no business of his to consider: he had
only, on general principles, to think of averting a scandal, and his
desire to avert it was increased by his fear of its involving Miss Bart.
There was nothing specific in this apprehension; he merely wished to
spare her the embarrassment of being ever so remotely connected with the
public washing of the Dorset linen.

How exhaustive and unpleasant such a process would be, he saw even more
vividly after his two hours' talk with poor Dorset. If anything came out
at all, it would be such a vast unpacking of accumulated moral rags as
left him, after his visitor had gone, with the feeling that he must fling
open the windows and have his room swept out. But nothing should come
out; and happily for his side of the case, the dirty rags, however pieced
together, could not, without considerable difficulty, be turned into a
homogeneous grievance. The torn edges did not always fit--there were
missing bits, there were disparities of size and colour, all of which it
was naturally Selden's business to make the most of in putting them under
his client's eye. But to a man in Dorset's mood the completest
demonstration could not carry conviction, and Selden saw that for the
moment all he could do was to soothe and temporize, to offer sympathy and
to counsel prudence. He let Dorset depart charged to the brim with the
sense that, till their next meeting, he must maintain a strictly
noncommittal attitude; that, in short, his share in the game consisted
for the present in looking on. Selden knew, however, that he could not
long keep such violences in equilibrium; and he promised to meet Dorset,
the next morning, at an hotel in Monte Carlo. Meanwhile he counted not a
little on the reaction of weakness and self-distrust that, in such
natures, follows on every unwonted expenditure of moral force; and his
telegraphic reply to Miss Bart consisted simply in the injun