Chapter 9 - Page 2

confidence between the two women, he was likely soon to be moved
to show how already, at moments, it had been for him as if he were
dealing directly with Mrs. Newsome. Sarah, to a certainty, would
have begun herself to feel it in him--and this naturally put it in
her power to torment him the more. From the moment she knew he
COULD be tormented--!

"But WHY can you be?"--his companion was surprised at his use of
the word.

"Because I'm made so--I think of everything."

"Ah one must never do that," she smiled. "One must think of as few
things as possible."

"Then," he answered, "one must pick them out right. But all I mean
is--for I express myself with violence--that she's in a position to
watch me. There's an element of suspense for me, and she can see me
wriggle. But my wriggling doesn't matter," he pursued. "I can bear
it. Besides, I shall wriggle out."

The picture at any rate stirred in her an appreciation that he felt
to be sincere. "I don't see how a man can be kinder to a woman than
you are to me."

Well, kind was what he wanted to be; yet even while her charming
eyes rested on him with the truth of this he none the less had his
humour of honesty. "When I say suspense I mean, you know," he
laughed, "suspense about my own case too!"

"Oh yes--about your own case too!" It diminished his magnanimity,
but she only looked at him the more tenderly.

"Not, however," he went on, "that I want to talk to you about that.
It's my own little affair, and I mentioned it simply as part of
Mrs. Pocock's advantage." No, no; though there was a queer present
temptation in it, and his suspense was so real that to fidget was a
relief, he wouldn't talk to her about Mrs. Newsome, wouldn't work
off on her the anxiety produced in him by Sarah's calculated
omissions of reference. The effect she produced of representing her
mother had been produced--and that was just the immense, the
uncanny part of it--without her having so much as mentioned that
lady. She had brought no message, had alluded to no question, had
only answered his enquiries with hopeless limited propriety. She
had invented a way of meeting them--as if he had been a polite
perfunctory poor relation, of distant degree--that made them almost
ridiculous in him. He couldn't moreover on his own side ask much
without appearing to publish how he had lately lacked news;
a circumstance of which it was Sarah's profound policy not to betray
a suspicion. These things, all the same, he wouldn't breathe to
Madame de Vionnet--much as they might make him walk up and down.
And what he didn't say--as well as what SHE didn't, for she had
also her high decencies--enhanced the effect of his being there
with her at the end of ten