's hotel, after wresting her boxes from the
vanquished hotel proprietor, and lay there, hearing the clear sound of every
little sentence of hers during the absence of Rosamund: her »Adieu,« and the
strange »Do you think so?« and »I know where I am; I scarcely know more.« Her
eyes and their darker lashes, and the fitful little sensitive dimples of a smile
without joy, came with her voice, but hardened to an aspect unlike her. Not a
word could he recover of what she had spoken before Rosamund's intervention. He
fancied she must have related details of her journey. Especially there must have
been mention, he thought, of her drive to the station from Tourdestelle; and
this flashed on him the scene of his ride to the château, and the meeting her on
the road, and the white light on the branching river, and all that was Renée in
the spirit of the place she had abandoned for him, believing in him. She had
proved that she believed in him. What in the name of sanity had been the meaning
of his language? and what was it between them that arrested him and caused him
to mumble absurdly of doing best, when in fact he was her bondman, rejoiced to
be so, by his pledged word? and when she, for some reason that he was sure she
had stated, though he could recollect no more than the formless hideousness of
it, was debarred from returning to Tourdestelle?
    He tossed in his bed as over a furnace, in the extremity of perplexity of
one accustomed to think himself ever demonstrably in the right, and now with his
whole nature in insurrection against that legitimate claim. It led him to accuse
her of a want of passionate warmth, in her not having supplicated and upbraided
him - not behaving theatrically, in fine, as the ranting pen has made us expect
of emergent ladies that they will naturally do. Concerning himself, he thought
commendingly, a tear would have overcome him. She had not wept. The kaleidoscope
was shaken in his fragmentary mind, and she appeared thrice adorable for this
noble composure, he brutish.
    Conscience and reason had resolved to a dead weight in him, like an
inanimate force, governing his acts despite the man, while he was with Renée.
Now his wishes and waverings conjured up a semblance of a conscience and much
reason to assure him that he had done foolishly as well as unkindly, most
unkindly: that he was even the ghastly spectacle of a creature attempting to be
more than he can be. Are we never to
