He positively, under the impression, seemed to loom larger than life for her, so that she saw him during these moments in a light of recognition which had had its brightness for her at many an hour of the past, but which had never been so intense and so almost admonitory.

His very quietness was part of it now, as always part of everything, of his success, his originality, his modesty, his exquisite public perversity, his inscrutable, incalculable energy; and this quality perhaps it might be--all the more too as the result, for the present occasion, of an admirable, traceable effort--that placed him in her eyes as no precious a work of art probably had ever been placed in his own.

There was a long moment, absolutely, during which her impression rose and rose, even as that of the typical charmed gazer, in the still museum, before the named and dated object, the pride of the catalogue, that time has polished and consecrated.

Extraordinary, in particular, was the number of the different ways in which he thus affected her as showing.

He was strong--that was the great thing.