the dread iniquity:  she cannot move without him; she is the marble block, and if she is to have a feature, he is the sculptor; she depends on him for life, and her human history at least is married to him far more than to the rescuing lover.  No wonder, then, that men should find her thrice cherishable featureless, or with the most moderate possible indication of a countenance.  Thousands of the excellent simple creatures do; and every reader of her tale.  On the contrary, the heroine of Reality is that woman whom you have met or heard of once in your course of years, and very probably despised for bearing in her composition the motive principle; at best, you say, a singular mixture of good and bad; anything but the feminine ideal of man.  Feature to some excess, you think, distinguishes her.  Yet she furnishes not any of the sweet sensual excitement pertaining to her spotless rival pursued by villany.  She knocks at the doors of the mind, and the mind must open to be interested in her.  Mind and heart must be wide open to excuse her sheer descent from the pure ideal of man.

Dacier’s wandering reflections all came back in crowds to the judicial Bench of the Black Cap.  He felt finely, apart from the treason, that her want of money degraded her:  him too, by contact.  Money she might have had to any extent:  upon application for it, of course.  How was he to imagine that she wanted money!  Smilingly as she welcomed him and his friends, entertaining them royally, he was bound to think she had means.  A decent propriety bound him not to think of the matter at all.  He naturally supposed she was capable of conducting her affairs.  And—­ money!  It soiled his memory:  though the hour at Rovio was rather pretty, and the scene at Copsley touching:  other times also, short glimpses of the woman, were taking.  The flood of her treachery effaced them.  And why reflect?  Constance called to him to look her way.

Diana’s letter died hard.  The corners were burnt to black tissue, with an edge or two of discoloured paper.  A small frayed central heap still resisted, and in kindness to the necessity for privacy, he impressed the fire-tongs to complete the execution.  After which he went to his desk and worked, under the presidency of Constance.

ETEXT EDITOR’S BOOKMARKS: 

A high wind will make a dead leaf fly like a bird
Beware the silent one of an assembly! 
Brittle is foredoomed
Common sense is the secret of every successful civil agitation
Its glee at a catastrophe; its poor stock of mercy
Money is of course a rough test of virtue
Salt of earth, to whom their salt must serve for nourishment
Sentimentality puts up infant hands for absolution
She herself did not like to be seen eating in public
Slightest taste for comic analysis that does not tumble to farce
The greed of gain is our volcano
The man had to be endured, like other doses in politics
Vagrant compassionateness of sentimentalists
What might have been
What the world says, is what the wind says
Without those consolatory efforts, useless between men