He was thankful enough to sit in silence with secretly clenched
teeth, devoured by jealousy--and nobody could have guessed that his
quiet deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was the supreme
effort of stoicism, that the man was engaged in keeping a sinister
watch on his tortures lest his strength should fail him. As
before, when grappling with other forces of nature, he could find
in himself all sorts of courage except the courage to run away.

It was perhaps from the lack of subjects they could have in common
that Miss Moorsom made him so often speak of his own life. He did
not shrink from talking about himself, for he was free from that
exacerbated, timid vanity which seals so many vain-glorious lips.
He talked to her in his restrained voice, gazing at the tip of her
shoe, and thinking that the time was bound to come soon when her
very inattention would get weary of him. And indeed on stealing a
glance he would see her dazzling and perfect, her eyes vague,
staring in mournful immobility, with a drooping head that made him
think of a tragic Venus arising before him, not from the foam of
the sea, but from a distant, still more formless, mysterious, and
potent immensity of mankind.



CHAPTER V



One afternoon Renouard stepping out on the terrace found nobody
there. It was for him, at the same time, a melancholy
disappointment and a poignant relief.