"  What  if  she  should  have  to  die  before  knowing,

before  seeing ?"     It  would  have  been  brutal,  in

the  early  stages  of  her  trouble,  to  put  that  question  to
her  ;  but  it  had  immediately  sounded  for  him  to  his
own  concern,  and  the  possibility  was  what  most  made
him  sorry  for  her. If  she  did  "  know,"  moreover,  in

84


THE    BEAST   IN   THE   JUNGLE

the  sense  of  her  having  had  some — what  should  he
think  ? — mystical  irresistible  light,  this  would  make
the  matter  not  better,  but  worse,  inasmuch  as  her
original  adoption  of  his  own  curiosity  had  quite  be
come  the  basis  of  her  life. She  had  been  living  to  see
what  would  be  to  be  seen,  and  it  would  quite  lacerate
her  to  have  to  give  up  before  the  accomplishment  of
the  vision. These  reflexions,  as  I  say,  quickened  his
generosity  ;  yet,  make  them  as  he  might,  he  saw  him
self,  with  the  lapse  of  the  period,  more  and  more  dis
concerted. It  lapsed  for  him  with  a  strange  steady
sweep,  and  the  oddest  oddity  was  that  it  gave  him,
independently  of  the  threat  of  much  inconvenience,
almost  the  only  positive  surprise  his  career,  if  career
it  could  be  called,  had  yet  offered  him. She  kept  the
house  as  she  had  never  done  ;  he  had  to  go  to  her  to
see  her — she  could  meet  him  nowhere  now,  though
there  was  scarce  a  corner  of  their  loved  old  London
in  which  she  hadn't  in  the  past,  at  one  time  or  another,
done  so  ;  and  he  found  her  always  seated  by  her
fire  in  the  deep  old-fashioned  chair  she  was  less  and
less  able  to  leave. He  had  been  struck  one  day,  after
an  absence  exceeding  his  usual  measure,  with  her  sud
denly  looking  much  older  to  him  than  he  had  ever
thought  of  her  being  ;  then  he  recognised  that  the
suddenness  was  all  on  his  side — he  had  just  simply
and  suddenly  noticed. She  looked  older  because  in
evitably,  after  so  many  years,  she  was  old,  or  almost  ;
which  was  of  course  true  in  still  greater  measure  of
her  companion. If  she  was  old,  or  almost,  John
Marcher  assuredly  was,  and  yet  it  was  her  showing
of  the  lesson,  not  his  own,  that  brought  the  truth
home  to  him. 