I met the couple in those literary circles referred to in
the papers: I have sufficiently intimated that it was only in such
circles we were all constructed to revolve. Gwendolen was more
than ever committed to them by the publication of her third novel,
and I myself definitely classed by holding the opinion that this
work was inferior to its immediate predecessor. Was it worse
because she had been keeping worse company? If her secret was, as
she had told me, her life--a fact discernible in her increasing
bloom, an air of conscious privilege that, cleverly corrected by
pretty charities, gave distinction to her appearance--it had yet
not a direct influence on her work. That only made one--everything
only made one--yearn the more for it; only rounded it off with a
mystery finer and subtler.
CHAPTER XI.
It was therefore from her husband I could never remove my eyes: I
beset him in a manner that might have made him uneasy. I went even
so far as to engage him in conversation. Didn't he know, hadn't he
come into it as a matter of course?--that question hummed in my
brain. Of course he knew; otherwise he wouldn't return my stare so
queerly. His wife had told him what I wanted and he was amiably
amused at my impotence. He didn't laugh--he wasn't a laugher: his
system was to present to my irritation, so that I should crudely
expose myself, a conversational blank as vast as his big bare brow.
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