ascinating little artistic problem!" That
something was wrong it was not difficult to perceive; but a good deal
more than met the eye might be presumed to be wrong if Flora was under
Mrs. Meldrum's roof. I had not for a year had much time to think of her,
but my imagination had had sufficient warrant for lodging her in more
gilded halls. One of the last things I had heard before leaving England
was that in commemoration of the new relationship she had gone to stay
with Lady Considine. This had made me take everything else for
granted, and the noisy American world had deafened my ears to possible
contradictions. Her spectacles were at present a direct contradiction;
they seemed a negation not only of new relationships but of every old
one as well. I remember nevertheless that when after a moment she walked
beside me on the grass I found myself nervously hoping she wouldn't as
yet at any rate tell me anything very dreadful; so that to stave off
this danger I harried her with questions about Mrs. Meldrum and, without
waiting for replies, became profuse on the subject of my own doings. My
companion was completely silent, and I felt both as if she were watching
my nervousness with a sort of sinister irony and as if I were talking
to some different, strange person. Flora plain and obscure and soundless
was no Flora at all. At Mrs. Meldrum's door she turned off with the
observation that as there was certainly a great deal I should have to
say to our friend she had better not go in with me. I looked at her
again--I had been keeping my eyes away from her--but only to meet her
magnified stare. I greatly desired in truth to see Mrs. Meldrum alone,
but there was something so pitiful in the girl's predicament that I
hesitated to fall in with this idea of dropping her. Yet one couldn't
express a compassion without seeming to take too much wretchedness for
granted. I reflected that I must really figure to her as a fool, which
was an entertainment I had never expected to give her. It rolled over me
there for the first time--it has come back to me since--that there is,
strangely, in very deep misfortune a dignity finer even than in the most
inveterate habit of being all right. I couldn't have to her the manner
of treating it as a mere detail that I was face to face with a part of
what, at our last meeting, we had had such a scene about; but while I
was trying to think of some manner that I _could_ have she said quite
colourlessly, yet som