Part 18

"'Greater'----?" She hung again on this term as she had done before; but it was as if something had happened since then, and she now met his idea in time. "Won't it be that you'll make her great?"

"I hope with all my heart I shall make her happy, but she's splendid," Ralph gravely, almost sententiously, said, "beyond any power of mine to show her off." He clung to his gravity, which somehow steadied him--so odd it was that the sense of her understanding wouldn't be abated, which even a particular lapse, he could see . . .

NOTES FOR THE SENSE OF THE PAST