being mentally annotated and classified; to be conscious of a yearning
for her that perturbed him in the form of a dull, aching restlessness; to
feel the prod of desire to win to the walk in life whereon she trod, and
to have his mind ever and again straying off in speculation and vague
plans of how to reach to her. Also, when his secret glance went across
to Norman opposite him, or to any one else, to ascertain just what knife
or fork was to be used in any particular occasion, that person's features
were seized upon by his mind, which automatically strove to appraise them
and to divine what they were--all in relation to her. Then he had to
talk, to hear what was said to him and what was said back and forth, and
to answer, when it was necessary, with a tongue prone to looseness of
speech that required a constant curb. And to add confusion to confusion,
there was the servant, an unceasing menace, that appeared noiselessly at
his shoulder, a dire Sphinx that propounded puzzles and conundrums
demanding instantaneous solution. He was oppressed throughout the meal
by the thought of finger-bowls. Irrelevantly, insistently, scores of
times, he wondered when they would come on and what they looked like. He
had heard of such things, and now, sooner or later, somewhere in the next
few minutes, he would see them, sit at table with exalted beings who used
them--ay, and he would use them himself. And most important of all, far
down and yet always at the surface of his thought, was the problem of how
he should comport himself toward these persons. What should his attitude
be? He wrestled continually and anxiously with the problem. There were
cowardly suggestions that he should make believe, assume a part; and
there were still more cowardly suggestions that warned him he would fail
in such course, that his nature was not fitted to live up to it, and that
he would make a fool of himself.

It was during the first part of the dinner, struggling to decide upon his
attitude, that he was very quiet. He did not know that his quietness was