on this, straightway, everything; completely free at
present from her first embarrassment, disposed even
as she felt she might become to undue volubility,
and conscious moreover of no alarm from his thus
perhaps wishing that she had not come alone. It
was exactly as if, in the forty-eight hours that had
passed, her acquaintance with him had somehow in
creased, and his own knowledge in particular re
ceived mysterious additions. They had been to
gether, before, scarce ten minutes; but the relation,
the one the ten minutes had so beautifully created,
was there to take straight up: and this not, on his
own part, from mere professional heartiness, mere
bedside manner, which she would have disliked
much rather from a quiet, pleasant air in him of hav
ing positively asked about her, asked here and there
and found out. Of course he couldn't in the least
have asked, or have wanted to; there was no source
of information to his hand, and he had really needed
none: he had found out simply by his genius and
found out, she meant, literally everything. Now
she knew not only that she didn't dislike this the
state of being found out about; but that, on the con
trary, it was truly what she had come for, and that,
for the time at least, it would give her something firm
to stand on. She struck herself as aware, aware as
she had never been, of really not having had from
the beginning anything firm. It would be strange
for the firmness to come, after all, from her learning
in these agreeable conditions that she was in some

[[258]]

p257 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p258w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p259

v?