before long that what held her was the mere refuge,
that something within her was after all too weak
for the Turners and Titians. They joined hands
about her in a circle too vast, though a circle that a
year before she would only have desired to trace.
They were truly for the larger, not for the smaller
life, the life of which the actual pitch, for example,
was an interest, the interest of compassion, in mis
guided efforts. She marked absurdly her little sta
tions, blinking, in her shrinkage of curiosity, at the
glorious walls, yet keeping an eye on vistas and ap
proaches, so that she shouldn't be flagrantly caught.
The vistas and approaches drew her in this way from
room to room, and she had been through many parts
of the show, as she supposed, when she sat down to
rest. There were chairs in scant clusters, places
from which one could gaze. Milly indeed at present
fixed her eyes more than elsewhere on the appear
ance, first, that she couldn't quite, after all, have ac
counted to an examiner for the order of her
"schools," and then on that of her being more tired
than she had meant, in spite of her having been so
much less intelligent. They found, her eyes, it
should be added, other occupation as well, which she
let them freely follow: they rested largely, in her
vagueness, on the vagueness of other visitors; they
attached themselves in especial, with mixed results,
to the surprising stream of her compatriots. She
was struck with the circumstance that the great
museum, early in August, was haunted with these

[[315]]

p314 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p315w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p316

v?