it was also exquisite and rare, that insistence should have, at a touch,
quite dropped from him. Discretion--he jumped at that; and yet not,
verily, at such a pitch, because it saved his nerves or his skin, but
because, much more valuably, it saved the situation. When I say he
"jumped" at it I feel the consonance of this term with the fact that--at
the end indeed of I know not how long--he did move again, he crossed
straight to the door. He wouldn't touch it--it seemed now that he might
if he would: he would only just wait there a little, to show, to prove,
that he wouldn't. He had thus another station, close to the thin
partition by which revelation was denied him; but with his eyes bent and
his hands held off in a mere intensity of stillness. He listened as if
there had been something to hear, but this attitude, while it lasted, was
his own communication. "If you won't then--good: I spare you and I give
up. You affect me as by the appeal positively for pity: you convince me
that for reasons rigid and sublime--what do I know?--we both of us should
have suffered. I respect them then, and, though moved and privileged as,
I believe, it has never been given to man, I retire, I renounce--never,
on my honour, to try again. So rest for ever--and let _me_!"

That, for Brydon, was the deep sense of this last demonstration--solemn,
measured, directed, as he felt it to be. He brought it to a close, he
turned away; and now verily he knew how deeply he had been stirred. He
retraced his steps, taking up his candle, burnt, he observed, well-nigh
to the socket, and marking again, lighten it as he would, the
distinctness of his footfall; after which, in a moment, he knew himself
at the other side of the house. He did here what he had not yet done at
these hours--he opened half a casement, one of those in the front, and
let in the air of the night; a thing he would have taken at any time
previous for a sharp rupture of his spell. His spell was broken now, and
it didn't matter--broken by his concession and his surrender, which made