been, for some reason, full of them, and they re
ferred themselves, provisionally, to some deeper
depth than she had touched though into two or
three such depths, it must be added, she had peeped
long enough to find herself suddenly draw back. It
was not Milly's unpacified state, in short, that now
troubled her though certainly, as Europe was the
great American sedative, the failure was to some
extent to be noted: it was the suspected presence
of something behind it which, however, could
scarcely have taken its place there since their de
parture. What any fresh motive of unrest could
suddenly have sprung from was, in short, not to be
divined. It was but half an explanation to say that
excitement, for each of them, had naturally dropped,
and that what they had left behind, or tried to the
great serious facts of life, as Mrs. Stringham liked
to call them was once more coming into sight
as objects loom through smoke when smoke begins
to clear; for these were general appearances from
which the girl's own aspect, her really larger vague
ness, seemed rather to disconnect itself. The near
est approach to a personal anxiety indulged in as
yet by the elder lady was on her taking occasion to
wonder if what she had more than anything else
got hold of mightn't be one of the finer, one of the
finest, one of the rarest as she called it so that she
might call it nothing worse cases of American
intensity.;, She had just had a moment of alarm
asked herself if her young friend were merely going

[[129]]

p128 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p129w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p130

v?