He could
well enough interpret, so he believed, Miss Hopgood's suppression of
him. Ass that he was not to see what he ought to have known so well,
that he was playing the fool to her; he, with a grown-up son, to
pretend to romance with a girl! At that moment she might be mocking
him, or, if she was too good for mockery, she might be contriving to
avoid or to quench him. The next time he met her, he would be made
to understand that he was PITIED, and perhaps he would then learn the
name of the youth who was his rival, and had won her. He would often
meet her, no doubt, but of what value would anything he could say be
to her. She could not be expected to make fine distinctions, and
there was a class of elderly men, to which of course he would be
assigned, but the thought was too horrible.
Perhaps his love for Clara might be genuine; perhaps it was not. He
had hoped that as he grew older he might be able really to SEE a
woman, but he was once more like one of the possessed. It was not
Clara Hopgood who was before him, it was hair, lips, eyes, just as it
was twenty years ago, just as it was with the commonest shop-boy he
met, who had escaped from the counter, and was waiting at an area
gate. It was terrible to him to find that he had so nearly lost his
self-control, but upon this point he was unjust to himself, for we
are often more distinctly aware of the strength of the temptation
than of the authority within us, which falteringly, but decisively,
enables us at last to resist it.
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