The Sacred Fount

t of the long afternoon many renewals of acquaintance and much sitting and strolling, for snatches of talk, in the long shade of g

ame, a full sequence of impressions, each of which, I afterwards saw, had been appointed to help all the others. If my anecdote, as I have mentioned, had begun, at Paddington, at a particular moment, it gathered substance step by step and

that I had met her - and I knew how she was valued there. I also knew that an aversion to pretty women - numbers of whom he had preserved for a grateful posterity - was his sign neither as man nor as artist; the effect of all of which was to make me ask myself what she could have been doing to him. Making love, possibly - yet from that he would scarce have appealed. She wouldn't, on the other hand, have given him her company only to be inhuman. I joined them, at all events, learning from Mrs. Server that she had come by a train previous to my own; and we made a slow trio till, at a turn of the prospect, we came upon another group. It consisted of Mrs. Froome and Lord Lutley and of Gilbert Long and L

ave me, I might certainly have felt that I was on the way to get it. The note of Long's predominance deepened during these minutes in a manner I can't describe, and I continued to feel that though we pretended to talk it was to him only we listened. He had us all in hand; he controlled for the moment all our attention and our relations. He was in short, as a consequence of our attitude, in possession of the scene to a tune he couldn't have dreamed of a year or two before - inasmuch as at that period he could have figured at no such eminence without making a fool of himself

ich the pair so evoked must move. These things - the way other people could feel about each other, the power not one's self, in the given instance, that made for passion - were of course at best the mystery of mysteries; still, there were cases in which fancy, sounding the depths or the shallows, could at least drop the lead. Lady John, perceptibly, was no such case; imagination, in her presence, was but the weak wing of the insect that bumps against the glass. She was pretty, prompt, hard, and, in a way that was special to her, a mistress at once of "culture" and of slang. She was like a hat - with one of Mrs. Briss's hat-pins - askew on the bust of Virgil. Her ornamental information - as strong as a coat of furniture-polish - almost knocked you down. Wha

andsome - handsomer than ever; slim, fair, fine, with charming pale eyes and splendid auburn hair. I said to myself that I hadn't done her justice; she hadn't organised her forces, was a little helpless and vague,

ough you were so fortunately occupied, y

was only occupied i

at

sense that she wante

Server? Does Mrs.

that she began on it to you as soon as

tle and so appealing. Even if she took one in hand with violence, moreover," I added, "I d

e brave,"

your profession? Doesn't it come back to me, for that

o that extent. But

In what way different? Sh

isposal. I judge that that's what it must have been. They were fixed - with intensity; and it made the difference with me. Her i

hat I've only to hold out my hand! At any r

k again. "I don't

w suspect." He wanted to get off to dress, but I

simply

as lovely a

roken away. "What ha

s anythi

o beastly

hat just one

ncanny." An

d of the passage. He had just seen, as the property of another, my unpacked things, with which he immediately connected me. He moreover, to my surprise, on my entering, sounded my name, in response to which I could only at first remain blank. It was in fact not till I had begun to help him place himself that, correcting my blankness, I knew him for Guy Brissenden. He had been put by himself, for some reason, in the bachelor wing and, exploring at hazard, had mistaken the

way that, fatigued, fixed, settled, he seemed to have piled up the years. They were there without having had time to arrive. It was as if he had discovered some miraculous short cut to the common doom. He had grown old, in fine, as people you see after an interval sometimes strike you as having grown rich - too quickly for the honest, or at least for the straight, way. He had cheated or inherited or speculated. It took me but a minute then to add him to my little gallery - the small co

funny?" said t

I was on the scent - that I was sure of; and yet even after I was sure I should still have been at a loss to put my enigma itself into words. I was just conscious, vaguely, of being on the track of a law, a law that would fit, that would strike me as governing the delicate phenomena - delicate though so marked - that my imagination found itself playing with. A part of the amusement they yielded came, I daresay, from my exag

of seats, was now at a distance. "I think so - but I didn

u might be able to tell me. But i

ent - then glanced a

thing directed toward me in Brissenden's face. My interlocutor remained blank, simply asking me

h, but I haven't!" He s

oting the sharpness too, "

t the dev

r the moment an idea on my h

sh from his cigarette

ng to. That was precisely my idea, and if I pitied him a little for my pressure my idea

in that boy? Nothing in him, that I know of, ever struck me i

if his denial had been sincere. But it hadn't. His curiosity never operated. He only exclaimed, more indulgently, that he didn't know what I was talking about; and I recognised after a little that if I had made him, without intention, uncomfortable, this was exactly a proof of his being what Mrs. Briss, at the station, had called cleverer, and what I had so much remarked while, in the garden before dinner, he held our smal

trayed, in our interv

e-light and in cloth-of-silver and

d to be able to see what I meant. "S

I said, "you put it the other way at Padd

gotten. "How the

h. "She hasn't grown very much less plain

interest had quickly dropped, "youth

. Look at poor

like better, b

nly when it is beauty. To see how little it ma

st now not to!" He rose a

present

is indeed was but briefly, for, as if to examine a picture behind him, the personage in question suddenly

't see a

thi

everyone e

onfoun

this moment, drew me on. I had in fact half guessed it as we stood there. But this only made me the more explana

s we quitted the room

ack, before us, still as if consciously presented, confessed to the burden of

who

poor B

our march. "Have you

n't possibly be more. And there he is: as fine, as swaddled, as royal a mummy, to the eye, as one would w

marked for him this expert observer could yet read it quite the wrong way. Why had so fine a young creature married a man three times her age? He was of course astounded when I told him the young creature was much nearer three times Brissenden's, and this led to some interesting talk between us as to the consequences, in general, of such association on such terms. The particular case before us, I easily granted, sinned by over-emphasis, but it was a fair, though a gross, illustration of what almost always occurred when twenty and forty, when thirty and sixty, mated or mingled, lived together in intimacy. Intimacy of course had to be postulated. Then either the high number or the low always got the upper hand, and it was usually the high that succeeded. It seemed, in other words, more possible to go back than to keep still, to grow young than to remain so. If Brissenden had been of his wife's age and his wife of Brissenden's, it would thus

throw out a question on it. "So that, paying to his last dro

hope. But before

sed. "How you p

ot a bit worse! But one must indeed wonder,

ther Brissend

e loves her passionately, sublimely." I saw it all. "It's in fact jus

flected, "for taking

oes take it. She just quietly, bu

ee then how he

to the process. So she hasn't it. She passes round it. It takes all her flood of life to meet her

or the ot

r of the s

poor Briss,'" my compan

ough he goes, in his passion, about with her, he dares scarcely show his face." And I made a final indu

with my ingenuity. "Ho

if I were on the

rised. "Someth

e to tell him I scarce knew what. But I

i do

f a discover

of

morrow. Good-night