 one had expected. Lucy was very
happy: all the happier because Stephen's society seemed to have become much more
interesting and amusing since Maggie had been there. Playful discussions -
sometimes serious ones - were going forward, in which both Stephen and Maggie
revealed themselves, to the admiration of the gentle unobtrusive Lucy; and it
more than once crossed her mind what a charming quartet they should have through
life when Maggie married Philip. Is it an inexplicable thing that a girl should
enjoy her lover's society the more for the presence of a third person, and be
without the slightest spasm of jealousy that the third person had the
conversation habitually directed to her? Not when that girl is as
tranquil-hearted as Lucy, thoroughly possessed with a belief that she knows the
state of her companions' affections, and not prone to the feelings which shake
such a belief in the absence of positive evidence against it. Besides, it was
Lucy by whom Stephen sat, to whom he gave his arm, to whom he appealed as the
person sure to agree with him; and every day there was the same tender
politeness towards her the same consciousness of her wants and care to supply
them. Was there really the same? - it seemed to Lucy that there was more; and it
was no wonder that the real significance of the change escaped her. It was a
subtle act of conscience in Stephen that even he himself was not aware of. His
personal attentions to Maggie were comparatively slight, and there had even
sprung up an apparent distance between them, that prevented the renewal of that
faint resemblance to gallantry into which he had fallen the first day in the
boat. If Stephen came in when Lucy was out of the room - if Lucy left them
together, they never spoke to each other: Stephen, perhaps, seemed to be
examining books on music, and Maggie bent her head assiduously over her work.
Each was oppressively conscious of the other's presence, even to the
finger-ends. Yet each looked and longed for the same thing to happen the next
day. Neither of them had begun to reflect on the matter, or silently to ask, »To
what does all this tend?« Maggie only felt that life was revealing something
quite new to her; and she was absorbed in the direct, immediate experience,
without any energy left for taking account of it and reasoning about it. Stephen
wilfully abstained from self-questioning, and would not admit to himself that he
felt an influence which was to have any determining effect on his conduct. And
when Lucy came into the
