This reminded me how I had observed at a particular moment--
after Corvick's death--the drop of her desire to see him face to
face. She had got what she wanted without that. I had been sure
that if she hadn't got it she wouldn't have been restrained from
the endeavour to sound him personally by those superior reflexions,
more conceivable on a man's part than on a woman's, which in my
case had served an a deterrent. It wasn't however, I hasten to
add, that my case, in spite of this invidious comparison, wasn't
ambiguous enough. At the thought that Vereker was perhaps at that
moment dying there rolled over me a wave of anguish--a poignant
sense of how inconsistently I still depended on him. A delicacy
that it was my one compensation to suffer to rule me had left the
Alps and the Apennines between us, but the sense of the waning
occasion suggested that I might in my despair at last have gone to
him. Of course I should really have done nothing of the sort. I
remained five minutes, while my companions talked of the new book,
and when Drayton Deane appealed to me for my opinion of it I made
answer, getting up, that I detested Hugh Vereker and simply
couldn't read him. I departed with the moral certainty that as the
door closed behind me Deane would brand me for awfully superficial.
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