Some such consideration as the
latter was doubtless in his mind for instance when he wrote
pleasantly to Miss Bartram that perhaps the great thing he had so
long felt as in the lap of the gods was no more than this
circumstance, which touched him so nearly, of her acquiring a house
in London. It was the first allusion they had yet again made,
needing any other hitherto so little; but when she replied, after
having given him the news, that she was by no means satisfied with
such a trifle as the climax to so special a suspense, she almost
set him wondering if she hadn't even a larger conception of
singularity for him than he had for himself. He was at all events
destined to become aware little by little, as time went by, that
she was all the while looking at his life, judging it, measuring
it, in the light of the thing she knew, which grew to be at last,
with the consecration of the years, never mentioned between them
save as "the real truth" about him. That had always been his own
form of reference to it, but she adopted the form so quietly that,
looking back at the end of a period, he knew there was no moment at
which it was traceable that she had, as he might say, got inside
his idea, or exchanged the attitude of beautifully indulging for
that of still more beautifully believing him.
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