_still_. The future presented itself as a succession of stages, in which
this could not happen till that had happened, nor the final disaster
arrive till all the intervening phases of the situation had been passed.
He had passed them. Of late he had seen that the flames of hell would
get hold upon him at that exact instant when, the last defense having
been broken down and the last shift resorted to, he should turn the key
on all outside hope, and be alone with himself and the knowledge that he
could do no more. Till then he could ward them off, and he had been
fighting them to the latest second. But on coming home from his office
in Boston that afternoon he had told himself that the game was up.
Nothing as far as he could see would give him the respite of another
four and twenty hours. The minutes between him and the final
preparations could be counted with the finger on the clock.

In the matter of preparation the most important detail would be to tell
Olivia. Hoping against hope that this would never become necessary, he
had put off the evil moment till the postponement had become cruel. But
he had lived through it so often in thought, he had so acutely suffered
with her in imagination the staggering humiliation of it all, that now,
when the time had come, his feelings were benumbed. As he turned into
his own grounds that day it seemed to him that his deadness of emotion
was such that he could carry the thing through mechanically, as a
skilled surgeon uses a knife. If he found her at tea in the drawing-room
he might tell her then.

He found her at tea, but there were people with her. He was almost
sorry; and yet it keyed him up to see that there was some necessity "to
still play the gentleman." He played it, and played it well--with much
of his old-time ease. The feat was so extraordinary as to call out a
round of mental applause for himself; and, after all, he reflected,