[The Tragic Comedians by George Meredith]@TWC D-Link bookThe Tragic Comedians CHAPTER VIII 34/45
She seemed a dead thing; but the sense of his having done gloriously in mastering himself to give these worldly people of hers a lesson and proof that he could within due measure bow to their laws and customs, dispelled the brief vision of her unfitness to be left.
The compressed energy of the man under his conscious display of a great-minded deference to the claims of family ties and duties, intoxicated him.
He thought but of the present achievement and its just effect: he had cancelled a bad reputation among these people, from whom he was about to lead forth a daughter for Alvan's wife, and he reasoned by the grandeur of his exhibition of generosity--which was brought out in strong relief when he delivered his retiring bow to the Frau von Rudiger's shoulder--that the worst was over; he had to deal no more with silly women: now for Clotilde's father! Women were privileged to oppose their senselessness to the divine fire: men could not retreat behind such defences; they must meet him on the common ground of men, where this constant battler had never yet encountered a reverse. Clotilde's cold staring gaze, a little livelier to wonderment than to reflection, observed him to be scrupulous of the formalities in the diverse character of his parting salutations to her mother, her sister; and the lady of the house.
He was going--he could actually go and leave her! She stretched herself to him faintly; she let it be seen that she did so as much as she had force to make it visible.
She saw him smiling incomprehensibly, like a winner of the field to be left to the enemy. She could get nothing from him but that insensible round smile, and she took the ebbing of her poor effort for his rebuff. 'You that offered yourself in flight to him who once proposed it, he had the choice of you and he abjured you.
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