bereft of one-half its powers?"

"Oh, how do I know what I want?" the poor man groaned. "I only know that
I trust you entirely, Doctor Lanfear. Whatever you think best will be
best and wisest, no matter what the outcome is."

He got away from Lanfear with these hopeless words, and again Lanfear
perceived that the case was left wholly to him. His consolation was the
charm of the girl's companionship, the delight of a nature knowing
itself from moment to moment as if newly created. For her, as nearly as
he could put the fact into words, the actual moment contained the past
and the future as well as the present. When he saw in her the
persistence of an exquisite personality independent of the means by
which he realized his own continuous identity, he sometimes felt as if
in the presence of some angel so long freed from earthly allegiance that
it had left all record behind, as we leave here the records of our first
years. If an echo of the past reached her, it was apt to be trivial and
insignificant, like those unimportant experiences of our remotest
childhood, which remain to us from a world outlived.

It was not an insipid perfection of character which reported itself in
these celestial terms, and Lanfear conjectured that angelic immortality,
if such a thing were, could not imply perfection except at the cost of
one-half of human character. When the girl wore a dress that she saw
pleased him more than another, there was a responsive pleasure in her
eyes, which he could have called vanity if he would; and she had at
times a wilfulness which he could have accused of being obstinacy. She
showed a certain jealousy of any experiences of his apart from her own,
not because they included others, but because they excluded her. He was
aware of an involuntary vigilance in her, which could not leave his