by a lady who bade her good-night, and he seemed to read that it cost her
nothing to speak to him in that tone; it was her old liberal lavish way,
with a certain added amplitude that time had brought; and if this manner
began to operate on the spot, at such a juncture in her history, perhaps
in the other days too it had meant just as little or as much--a mere
mechanical charity, with the difference now that she was satisfied, ready
to give but in want of nothing. Oh she was satisfied--and why shouldn't
she be? Why shouldn't she have been surprised at his coming the first
day--for all the good she had ever got from him? As the lady continued
to hold her attention Paul turned from her with a strange irritation in
his complicated artistic soul and a sort of disinterested disappointment.
She was so happy that it was almost stupid--a disproof of the
extraordinary intelligence he had formerly found in her. Didn't she know
how bad St. George could be, hadn't she recognised the awful thinness--?
If she didn't she was nothing, and if she did why such an insolence of
serenity? This question expired as our young man's eyes settled at last
on the genius who had advised him in a great crisis. St. George was
still before the chimney-piece, but now he was alone--fixed, waiting, as
if he meant to stop after every one--and he met the clouded gaze of the
young friend so troubled as to the degree of his right (the right his
resentment would have enjoyed) to regard himself as a victim. Somehow
the ravage of the question was checked by the Master's radiance. It was
as fine in its way as Marian Fancourt's, it denoted the happy human
being; but also it represented to Paul Overt that the author of
"Shadowmere" had now definitely ceased to count--ceased to count as a
writer. As he smiled a welcome across the place he was almost banal, was
almost smug. Paul fancied that for a moment he hesitated to make a
movement, as if for all the world he _had_ his bad conscience; then they
had already met in the middle of the room and had shaken
hands--expressively, cordially on St. George's part. With which they had