the sighs she didn't know to be stupid. And as if, though he was so
stupid all through, he had let the friendly suffusion of her eyes yet
tell him she was ready for anything, he floundered about, wondering what
the devil he could lay hold of.




XIX


When he had lighted a cigarette and begun to smoke in her face it was as
if he had struck with the match the note of some queer clumsy ferment
of old professions, old scandals, old duties, a dim perception of what
he possessed in her and what, if everything had only--damn it!--been
totally different, she might still be able to give him. What she was
able to give him, however, as his blinking eyes seemed to make out
through the smoke, would be simply what he should be able to get from
her. To give something, to give here on the spot, was all her own
desire. Among the old things that came back was her little instinct of
keeping the peace; it made her wonder more sharply what particular thing
she could do or not do, what particular word she could speak or not
speak, what particular line she could take or not take, that might for
every one, even for the Countess, give a better turn to the crisis. She
was ready, in this interest, for an immense surrender, a surrender of
everything but Sir Claude, of everything but Mrs. Beale. The immensity
didn't include THEM; but if he had an idea at the back of his head
she had also one in a recess as deep, and for a time, while they sat
together, there was an extraordinary mute passage between her vision
of this vision of his, his vision of her vision, and her vision of his