He fixed his gaze on Dahlia, and the perfect refinement of her simplicity caused him to think that she might be aware of an inappropriateness in the contemplated union.

“Is he a clumsy fellow?  I mean, do you read straight off that he has no pretension to any manners of a gentleman—­nothing near it?”

To this question, put with hesitation by Robert, Dahlia made answer, “I respect him.”

She would not strengthen her prayer by drawing the man’s portrait.  Speedily she forgot how the doing so would in any way have strengthened her prayer.  The excitement had left her brain dull.  She did little more than stare mildly, and absently bend her head, while Robert said that he would go to Rhoda on the morrow, and speak seriously with her.

“But I think I can reckon her ideas will side with mine, that it is to your interest, my dear, to make your feelings come round warm to a man you can respect, and who offers you a clear path,” he said.

Whereat Dahlia quietly blinked her eyes.

When he stood up, she rose likewise.

“Am I to take a kiss to Rhoda?” he said, and seeing her answer, bent his forehead, to which she put her lips.

“And now I must think all night long about the method of transferring it.  Good-bye, Dahlia.  You shall hear from your sister the morning after to-morrow.  Good-bye!”

He pressed her hand, and went to the door.

“There’s nothing I can do for you, Dahlia?”

“Not anything.”

“God bless you, my dear!”

Robert breathed with the pleasant sense of breathing, when he was again in the street.  Amazement, that what he had dreaded so much should be so easily over, set him thinking, in his fashion, on the marvels of life, and the naturalness in the aspect of all earthly things when you look at them with your eyes.

But in the depths of his heart there was disquiet.

“It’s the best she can do; she can do no better,” he said; and said it more frequently than it needed by a mind established in the conviction.  Gradually he began to feel that certain things seen with the eyes, natural as they may then appear and little terrible, leave distinct, solid, and grave impressions.  Something of what our human tragedy may show before high heaven possessed him.  He saw it bare of any sentiment, in the person of the girl Dahlia.  He could neither put a halo of imagination about her, nor could he conceive one degraded thought of the creature.  She stood a naked sorrow, haunting his brain.

And still he continued saying, “It’s the best she can do:  it’s best for all.  She can do nothing better.”

He said it, unaware that he said it in self-defence.

The pale nun-like ghostly face hung before him, stronger in outline the farther time widened between him and that suffering flesh.

CHAPTER XXXI