Middle."

I protested that no bones were broken; but he moved with me to my
own door, his hand, on my shoulder, kindly feeling for a fracture;
and on hearing that I had come up to bed he asked leave to cross my
threshold and just tell me in three words what his qualification of
my remarks had represented. It was plain he really feared I was
hurt, and the sense of his solicitude suddenly made all the
difference to me. My cheap review fluttered off into space, and
the best things I had said in it became flat enough beside the
brilliancy of his being there. I can see him there still, on my
rug, in the firelight and his spotted jacket, his fine clear face
all bright with the desire to be tender to my youth. I don't know
what he had at first meant to say, but I think the sight of my
relief touched him, excited him, brought up words to his lips from
far within. It was so these words presently conveyed to me
something that, as I afterwards knew, he had never uttered to any
one. I've always done justice to the generous impulse that made
him speak; it was simply compunction for a snub unconsciously
administered to a man of letters in a position inferior to his own,
a man of letters moreover in the very act of praising him. To make
the thing right he talked to me exactly as an equal and on the
ground of what we both loved best. The hour, the place, the
unexpectedness deepened the impression: he couldn't have done
anything more intensely effective.



CHAPTER III.