But Mrs. Upton talked a great deal about Imogen, so much that he came
to suspect her of adjusting the conversation to some supposed craving
in himself. She had never asked a question about his relations with her
daughter, accepting merely with interest any signs they might choose to
give her, but insinuating no hint of an appeal for more than they might
choose to give. She probably took for granted what was the truth of the
situation, that it rested with Imogen to make it a definite one. She
did not treat him as an accepted lover, nor yet as a rejected one; she
discriminated with the nicest delicacy. What she allowed herself to see,
the ground she went upon, was his deep interest, his deep attachment. In
that light he was admitted by degrees to an intimacy that he knew he could
hardly have won so soon on his own merits. She had observed him; she had
thought him over; she liked him for himself; but, far more than this, she
liked him for Imogen. He often guessed, from a word or look, at a deep core
of feeling in her where her repressed, unemphatic, yet vigilant, maternity
burned steadily. From her growing fondness for him he could gage how fond
she must be of Imogen. The nearness that this made for them was wholly
delightful to Jack, were it not embittered by the familiar sense, sharper
than ever now, of self-questioning and restlessness. A year ago, six months
ago--no, three months only, just before her own coming--how exquisitely
such sympathy, such understanding would have fitted into all his needs. He
could have talked to her, then, by the hour, frankly, freely, joyously,
about Imogen. And the restlessness now was to feel that it was just
because of her coming, because of the soft clear light that she had so
unconsciously, so revealingly, diffused, that things had, in some odd way,
taken on a new color, so that the whole world, so that Imogen especially,
looked different, so that he couldn't any longer be frank, altogether. It
would have been part of the joy, three months ago, to talk over his loving
perception of Imogen's little foibles and childishnesses, to laugh, with