was to feel at this crisis that no clear, no common
answer, no direct satisfaction on this point, was
to reach her; she was to see her question itself sim
ply go to pieces. She couldn't tell if he were differ
ent or not, and she didn't know nor care if she were:
these things had ceased to matter in the light of the
only thing she did know. This was that she liked
him, as she put it to herself, as much as ever; and
if that were to amount to liking a new person the
amusement would be but the greater. She had
thought him at first very quiet, in spite of recovery
from his original confusion; though even the shade
of bewilderment, she yet perceived, had not been due
to such vagueness on the subject of her reintensified
identity as the probable sight, over there, of many
thousands of her kind would sufficiently have justi
fied. No, he was quiet, inevitably, for the first half
of the time, because Milly's own lively line the line
of spontaneity made everything else relative; and
because too, so far as Kate was spontaneous, it was
ever so finely in the air among them that the normal
pitch must be kept. Afterwards, when they had got
a little more used, as it were, to each other's separate
felicity, he had begun to talk more, clearly bethought
himself, at a given moment, of what his natural live
ly line would be. It would be to take for granted
she must wish to hear of the States, and to give her,
in its order, everything he had seen and done there.
He abounded, of a sudden he almost insisted; he
returned, after breaks, to the charge; and the effect

[[326]]

p325 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p326w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p327

v?