Night and Day | Page 9

at one time it seemed to the young man
that he would be hypnotized into doing what she pretended to want him
to do, for he could not suppose that she attached any value whatever to
his presence. Katharine, however, made an opportunity for him to leave,
and for that he was grateful to her, as one young person is grateful for
the understanding of another.


CHAPTER II
The young man shut the door with a sharper slam than any visitor had
used that afternoon, and walked up the street at a great pace, cutting the
air with his walking-stick. He was glad to find himself outside that
drawing-room, breathing raw fog, and in contact with unpolished
people who only wanted their share of the pavement allowed them. He
thought that if he had had Mr. or Mrs. or Miss Hilbery out here he
would have made them, somehow, feel his superiority, for he was
chafed by the memory of halting awkward sentences which had failed
to give even the young woman with the sad, but inwardly ironical eyes
a hint of his force. He tried to recall the actual words of his little
outburst, and unconsciously supplemented them by so many words of
greater expressiveness that the irritation of his failure was somewhat
assuaged. Sudden stabs of the unmitigated truth assailed him now and
then, for he was not inclined by nature to take a rosy view of his
conduct, but what with the beat of his foot upon the pavement, and the

glimpse which half-drawn curtains offered him of kitchens, dining-
rooms, and drawing-rooms, illustrating with mute power different
scenes from different lives, his own experience lost its sharpness.
His own experience underwent a curious change. His speed slackened,
his head sank a little towards his breast, and the lamplight shone now
and again upon a face grown strangely tranquil. His thought was so
absorbing that when it became necessary to verify the name of a street,
he looked at it for a time before he read it; when he came to a crossing,
he seemed to have to reassure himself by two or three taps, such as a
blind man gives, upon the curb; and, reaching the Underground station,
he blinked in the bright circle of light, glanced at his watch, decided
that he might still indulge himself in darkness, and walked straight on.
And yet the thought was the thought with which he had started. He was
still thinking about the people in the house which he had left; but
instead of remembering, with whatever accuracy he could, their looks
and sayings, he had consciously taken leave of the literal truth. A turn
of the street, a firelit room, something monumental in the procession of
the lamp-posts, who shall say what accident of light or shape had
suddenly changed the prospect within his mind, and led him to murmur
aloud:
"She'll do. . . . Yes, Katharine Hilbery'll do. . . . I'll take Katharine
Hilbery."
As soon as he had said this, his pace slackened, his head fell, his eyes
became fixed. The desire to justify himself, which had been so urgent,
ceased to torment him, and, as if released from constraint, so that they
worked without friction or bidding, his faculties leapt forward and
fixed, as a matter of course, upon the form of Katharine Hilbery. It was
marvellous how much they found to feed upon, considering the
destructive nature of Denham's criticism in her presence. The charm,
which he had tried to disown, when under the effect of it, the beauty,
the character, the aloofness, which he had been determined not to feel,
now possessed him wholly; and when, as happened by the nature of
things, he had exhausted his memory, he went on with his imagination.
He was conscious of what he was about, for in thus dwelling upon Miss

Hilbery's qualities, he showed a kind of method, as if he required this
vision of her for a particular purpose. He increased her height, he
darkened her hair; but physically there was not much to change in her.
His most daring liberty was taken with her mind, which, for reasons of
his own, he desired to be exalted and infallible, and of such
independence that it was only in the case of Ralph Denham that it
swerved from its high, swift flight, but where he was concerned, though
fastidious at first, she finally swooped from her eminence to crown him
with her approval. These delicious details, however, were to be worked
out in all their ramifications at his leisure; the main point was that
Katharine Hilbery would do; she would do for weeks, perhaps for
months. In taking her he had provided himself with something the lack
of which had left a