such cases was not that you minded what was
false, but that you missed what was true. He might
be ill, and it might suit you to know it, but no con
tact with him, for this, could ever be straight enough.
Just so he even might die, but Kate fairly wondered
on what evidence of his own she would some day
have to believe it.

He had not at present come down from his room,
which she knew to be above the one they were in:
he had already been out of the house, though he
would either, should she challenge him, deny it or
present it as a proof of his extremity. She had,
however, by this time, quite ceased to challenge him;
not only, face to face with him, vain irritation
dropped, but he breathed upon the tragic conscious
ness in such a way that after a moment nothing of
it was left. The difficulty was not less that he
breathed in the same way upon the comic: she al
most believed that with this latter she might still
have found a foothold for clinging to him. He had
ceased to be amusing he was really too inhuman.
His perfect look, which had floated him so long, was
practically perfect still; but one had long since for
every occasion taken it for granted. Nothing could
have better shown than the actual how right one
had been. He looked exactly as much as usual
all pink and silver as to skin and hair, all strait-
ness and starch as to figure and dress the man in
the world least connected with anything unpleasant.
He was so particularly the English gentleman and

[[8]]

p007 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p008w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p009

v?