With which, his glasses still fixed on her, his hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back, his legs a little (273) apart, he seemed to plant or to square himself for a kind of assurance it had occurred to him he might as well treat her to, in default of other things, before they changed their subject. It had the effect for her of a reminder--a reminder of all he was, of all he had done, of all, above and beyond his being her perfect little father, she might take him as representing, take him as having quite eminently, in the eyes of two hemispheres, been capable of, and as therefore wishing, not--was it?--illegitimately, to call her attention to. The "successful" beneficent person, the beautiful bountiful original dauntlessly wilful great citizen, the consummate collector and infallible high authority he had been and still was--these things struck her on the spot as making up for him in a wonderful way a character she must take into account in dealing with him either for pity or for envy. 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 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 (274) 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. He was sure--sure for himself always, whatever his idea: the expression of that in him had somehow never appeared more identical with his proved taste for the rare and the true. But what stood out beyond everything was that he was always marvellously young--which could n't but crown at this juncture his whole appeal to her imagination. Before she knew it she was lifted aloft by the consciousness that he was simply a great and deep and high little man, and that to love him with tenderness was not to be distinguished a whit from loving him with pride. It came to her, all strangely, as a sudden, an immense relief. The sense that he was n't a failure, and could never be, purged their predicament of every meanness--made it as if they had really emerged, in their transmuted union, to smile almost without pain. It was like a new confidence, and after another instant she knew even still better why. Was n't it because now also, on his side, he was thinking of her as his daughter, was TRYING her, during these mute seconds, as the child of his blood? Oh then if she was n't with her little conscious passion the child of any weakness, what was she but strong enough too? It swelled in her fairly; it raised her higher, higher: she was n't in that case a failure either--had n't been, but the contrary; his strength was her strength, her pride was (275) his, and they were decent and competent together This was all in the answer she finally made him.
"I believe in you more than any one."
"Than any one at all?"
She hesitated for all it might mean; but there was--oh a thousand times!--no doubt of it. "Than any one at all." She kept nothing of it back now, met his eyes over it, let him have the whole of it; after which she went on:
"And that's the way, I think, you believe in me."
He looked at her a minute longer, but his tone at last was right. "About the way--yes."
"Well then--?" She spoke as for the end and for other matters--for anything, everything else there might be. They would never return to it.
"Well then--!" His hands came out, and while her own took them he drew her to his breast and held her. He held her hard and kept her long, and she let herself go; but it was an embrace that, august and almost stern, produced for all its intimacy no revulsion and broke into no inconsequence of tears.
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