Soper. But his life since he had known her
was judged even by Jewdwine to be irreproachable. As Rickman
understood the situation, he had been sacrificed to a prejudice, a
convention, an ineradicable class-feeling on the part of the
distinguished and fastidious don. It was not the class-feeling itself
that he resented; he could have forgiven Jewdwine a sentiment over
which he had apparently no control; he could have forgiven him
anything, even his silence and his subterfuge, if he had only
delivered Lucia's messages. That was an unpardonable cruelty. It was
like holding back a cup of water from a man dying of thirst. He had
consumed his heart with longing for some word or sign from her; he had
tortured himself with his belief in her utter repudiation of him; and
Jewdwine, who had proof of the contrary, had abandoned him to his
belief. He could only think that, after taking him up so gently, Lucia
had dropped him and left him where he fell. He owned that Jewdwine was
not bound to tell him that Lucia had returned to England, or to
provide against any false impression he might form as to her
whereabouts; and it was not there, of course, that the cruelty came
in. He could have borne the sense of physical separation if, instead
of being forced to infer her indifference from her silence, he had
known that her kind thoughts had returned to him continually; if he
had known that whatever else had been taken from him, he had kept her
friendship. Her friendship--it was little enough compared with what he
wanted--but it had already done so much for him that he knew what he
could have made of it, if he had only been certain that it was his. He
could have lived those five years on the memory of her, as other men
live on hope; sustained by the intangible but radiant presence, by
inimitable, incommunicable ardours, by immaterial satisfactions and
delights. If they had not destroyed all bodily longing, they would at
least have made impossible its separation from her and transference to
another woman. They would have saved him from this base concession to
the folly of the flesh, this marriage which, as its hour approached,
seemed to him more inevitable and more disastrous. Madness lay in the
thought that his deliverance had been near him on the very day when he
fixed that hour; and that at no time had it been very far away. No;
not when two years ago he had stood hesitating on the edge of the
inexpiable, immeasurable folly; the folly that