Her knowledge simply settled it; he would have been sure
enough by this time had she been wrong. There was that in his
situation, no doubt, that disposed him too much to see her as a
mere confidant, taking all her light for him from the fact--the
fact only--of her interest in his predicament; from her mercy,
sympathy, seriousness, her consent not to regard him as the
funniest of the funny. Aware, in fine, that her price for him was
just in her giving him this constant sense of his being admirably
spared, he was careful to remember that she had also a life of her
own, with things that might happen to HER, things that in
friendship one should likewise take account of. Something fairly
remarkable came to pass with him, for that matter, in this
connexion--something represented by a certain passage of his
consciousness, in the suddenest way, from one extreme to the other.
He had thought himself, so long as nobody knew, the most
disinterested person in the world, carrying his concentrated
burden, his perpetual suspense, ever so quietly, holding his tongue
about it, giving others no glimpse of it nor of its effect upon his
life, asking of them no allowance and only making on his side all
those that were asked.
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