It was repeated the next day; it went on for three days; and at the end of that time she knew what to think. When, at the beginning, she had emerged from her temporary shelter Captain Everard had quitted the shop; and he had not come again that evening, as it had struck her he possibly might — might all the more easily that there were numberless persons who came, morning and afternoon, numberless times, so that he wouldn’t necessarily have attracted attention. The second day it was different and yet on the whole worse. His access to her had become possible — she felt herself even reaping the fruit of her yesterday’s glare at Mr. Buckton; but transacting1 his business with him didn’t simplify — it could, in spite of the rigour of circumstance, feed so her new conviction. The rigour was tremendous, and his telegrams — not now mere2 pretexts3 for getting at her — were apparently4 genuine; yet the conviction had taken but a night to develop. It could be simply enough expressed; she had had the glimmer5 of it the day before in her idea that he needed no more help than she had already given; that it was help he himself was prepared to render. He had come up to town but for three or four days; he had been absolutely obliged to be absent after the other time; yet he would, now that he was face to face with her, stay on as much longer as she liked. Little by little it was thus clarified, though from the first flash of his re-appearance she had read into it the real essence.
That was what the night before, at eight o’clock, her hour to go, had made her hang back and dawdle6. She did last things or pretended to do them; to be in the cage had suddenly become her safety, and she was literally7 afraid of the alternate self who might be waiting outside. He might be waiting; it was he who was her alternate self, and of him she was afraid. The most extraordinary change had taken place in her from the moment of her catching8 the impression he seemed to have returned on purpose to give her. Just before she had done so, on that bewitched afternoon, she had seen herself approach without a scruple9 the porter at Park Chambers10; then as the effect of the rush of a consciousness quite altered she had on at last quitting Cocker’s, gone straight home for the first time since her return from Bournemouth. She had passed his door every night for weeks, but nothing would have induced her to pass it now. This change was the tribute of her fear — the result of a change in himself as to which she needed no more explanation than his mere face vividly11 gave her; strange though it was to find an element of deterrence12 in the object that she regarded as the most beautiful in the world. He had taken it from her in the Park that night that she wanted him not to propose to her to sup; but he had put away the lesson by this time — he practically proposed supper every time he looked at her. This was what, for that matter, mainly filled the three days. He came in twice on each of these, and it was as if he came in to give her a chance to relent. That was after all, she said to herself in the intervals13, the most that he did. There were ways, she fully14 recognised, in which he spared her, and other particular ways as to which she meant that her silence should be full to him of exquisite15 pleading. The most particular of all was his not being outside, at the corner, when she quitted the place for the night. This he might so easily have been — so easily if he hadn’t been so nice. She continued to recognise in his forbearance the fruit of her dumb supplication16, and the only compensation he found for it was the harmless freedom of being able to appear to say: “Yes, I’m in town only for three or four days, but, you know, I would stay on.” He struck her as calling attention each day, each hour, to the rapid ebb17 of time; he exaggerated to the point of putting it that there were only two days more, that there was at last, dreadfully, only one.
There were other things still that he struck her as doing with a special intention; as to the most marked of which — unless indeed it were the most obscure — she might well have marvelled18 that it didn’t seem to her more horrid19. It was either the frenzy20 of her imagination or the disorder21 of his baffled passion that gave her once or twice the vision of his putting down redundant22 money — sovereigns not concerned with the little payments he was perpetually making — so that she might give him some sign of helping23 him to slip them over to her. What was most extraordinary in this impression was the amount of excuse that, with some incoherence, she found for him. He wanted to pay her because there was nothing to pay her for. He wanted to offer her things he knew she wouldn’t take. He wanted to show her how much he respected her by giving her the supreme24 chance to show him she was respectable. Over the dryest transactions, at any rate, their eyes had out these questions. On the third day he put in a telegram that had evidently something of the same point as the stray sovereigns — a message that was in the first place concocted25 and that on a second thought he took back from her before she had stamped it. He had given her time to read it and had only then bethought himself that he had better not send it. If it was not to Lady Bradeen at Twindle — where she knew her ladyship then to be — this was because an address to Doctor Buzzard at Brickwood was just as good, with the added merit of its not giving away quite so much a person whom he had still, after all, in a manner to consider. It was of course most complicated, only half lighted; but there was, discernibly enough, a scheme of communication in which Lady Bradeen at Twindle and Dr. Buzzard at Brickwood were, within limits, one and the same person. The words he had shown her and then taken back consisted, at all events, of the brief but vivid phrase “Absolutely impossible.” The point was not that she should transmit it; the point was just that she should see it. What was absolutely impossible was that before he had setted something at Cocker’s he should go either to Twindle or to Brickwood.
The logic26 of this, in turn, for herself, was that she could lend herself to no settlement so long as she so intensely knew. What she knew was that he was, almost under peril27 of life, clenched28 in a situation: therefore how could she also know where a poor girl in the P.O. might really stand? It was more and more between them that if he might convey to her he was free, with all the impossible locked away into a closed chapter, her own case might become different for her, she might understand and meet him and listen. But he could convey nothing of the sort, and he only fidgeted and floundered in his want of power. The chapter wasn’t in the least closed, not for the other party; and the other party had a pull, somehow and somewhere: this his whole attitude and expression confessed, at the same time that they entreated29 her not to remember and not to mind. So long as she did remember and did mind he could only circle about and go and come, doing futile30 things of which he was ashamed. He was ashamed of his two words to Dr. Buzzard; he went out of the shop as soon as he had crumpled31 up the paper again and thrust it into his pocket. It had been an abject32 little exposure of dreadful impossible passion. He appeared in fact to be too ashamed to come back. He had once more left town, and a first week elapsed, and a second. He had had naturally to return to the real mistress of his fate; she had insisted — she knew how to insist, and he couldn’t put in another hour. There was always a day when she called time. It was known to our young friend moreover that he had now been dispatching telegrams from other offices. She knew at last so much that she had quite lost her earlier sense of merely guessing. There were no different shades of distinctness — it all bounced out.
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transacting
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| v.办理（业务等）( transact的现在分词 )；交易，谈判 | |
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mere
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| adj.纯粹的；仅仅，只不过 | |
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pretexts
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| n.借口，托辞( pretext的名词复数 ) | |
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apparently
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| adv.显然地；表面上，似乎 | |
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glimmer
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| v.发出闪烁的微光；n.微光，微弱的闪光 | |
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dawdle
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| vi.浪费时间；闲荡 | |
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literally
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| adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实 | |
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catching
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| adj.易传染的，有魅力的，迷人的，接住 | |
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scruple
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| n./v.顾忌，迟疑 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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vividly
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| adv.清楚地，鲜明地，生动地 | |
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deterrence
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| 威慑，制止； 制止物，制止因素； 挽留的事物； 核威慑 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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fully
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| adv.完全地，全部地，彻底地；充分地 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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supplication
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| n.恳求，祈愿，哀求 | |
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ebb
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| vi.衰退，减退；n.处于低潮，处于衰退状态 | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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horrid
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| adj.可怕的；令人惊恐的；恐怖的；极讨厌的 | |
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frenzy
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| n.疯狂，狂热，极度的激动 | |
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disorder
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| n.紊乱，混乱；骚动，骚乱；疾病，失调 | |
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redundant
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| adj.多余的，过剩的；(食物)丰富的；被解雇的 | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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supreme
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| adj.极度的，最重要的；至高的，最高的 | |
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concocted
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的过去式和过去分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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logic
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| n.逻辑(学)；逻辑性 | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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clenched
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| v.紧握，抓紧，咬紧( clench的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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entreated
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| 恳求，乞求( entreat的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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futile
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| adj.无效的，无用的，无希望的 | |
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31
crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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abject
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| adj.极可怜的，卑屈的 | |
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