we describe her as daring to indulge. And the
judgment it was that made her sensation simple.
He had distinguished her that was the chill. He
hadn't known how could he? that she was devil
ishly subtle, subtle exactly in the manner of the sus
pected, the suspicious, the condemned. He in fact
confessed to it, in his way, as to an interest in her
combinations, her funny race, her funny losses, her
funny gains, her funny freedom, and, no doubt,
above all, her funny manners funny, like those of
Americans at their best, without being vulgar, legiti
mating amiability and helping to pass it off. In his
appreciation of these redundancies he dressed out for
her the compassion he so signally permitted himself
to waste; but its operation for herself was as directly
divesting, denuding, exposing. It reduced her to
her ultimate state, which was that of a poor girl
with her rent to pay for example staring before
her in a great city. Milly had her rent to pay, her
rent for her future; everything else but how to meet
it fell away from her in pieces, in tatters. This was
the sensation the great man had doubtless not pur
posed. Well, she must go home, like the poor girl,
and see. There might after all be ways; the poor
girl too would be thinking. It came back for that
matter perhaps to views already presented. She
looked about her again, on her feet, at her scattered,
melancholy comrades some of them so melancholy
as to be down on their stomachs in the grass, turned
away, ignoring, burrowing; she saw once more,

[[277]]

p276 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p277w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p278

v?