"Not fiendish--strange."

"Yes, that may be, since strangeness is not in the nature of a thing,

but in its relation to something extrinsic--in this case an unessential

observer."

He went to his desk, and searching a while found a paper, which be

unfolded and brought to her. A thick cross appeared in ink at the

bottom--evidently from the hand of Grammer. Grace put the paper in her

pocket with a look of much relief.

As Fitzpiers did not take up the money (half of which had come from

Grace's own purse), she pushed it a little nearer to him. "No, no. I

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shall not take it from the old woman," he said. "It is more strange

than the fact of a surgeon arranging to obtain a subject for dissection

that our acquaintance should be formed out of it."

"I am afraid you think me uncivil in showing my dislike to the notion.

But I did not mean to be."

"Oh no, no." He looked at her, as he had done before, with puzzled

interest. "I cannot think, I cannot think," he murmured. "Something

bewilders me greatly." He still reflected and hesitated. "Last night

I sat up very late," he at last went on, "and on that account I fell

into a little nap on that couch about half an hour ago. And during my

few minutes of unconsciousness I dreamed--what do you think?--that you

stood in the room."

Should she tell? She merely blushed.

"You may imagine," Fitzpiers continued, now persuaded that it had,

indeed, been a dream, "that I should not have dreamed of you without

considerable thinking about you first."

He could not be acting; of that she felt assured.

"I fancied in my vision that you stood there," he said, pointing to

where she had paused. "I did not see you directly, but reflected in

the glass. I thought, what a lovely creature! The design is for once

carried out. Nature has at last recovered her lost union with the

Idea! My thoughts ran in that direction because I had been reading the

work of a transcendental philosopher last night; and I dare say it was

the dose of Idealism that I received from it that made me scarcely able

to distinguish between reality and fancy. I almost wept when I awoke,

and found that you had appeared to me in Time, but not in Space, alas!"

At moments there was something theatrical in the delivery of

Fitzpiers's effusion; yet it would have been inexact to say that it was

intrinsically theatrical. It often happens that in situations of

unrestraint, where there is no thought of the eye of criticism, real

feeling glides into a mode of manifestation not easily distinguishable

from rodomontade. A veneer of affectation overlies a bulk of truth,

with the evil consequence, if perceived, that the substance is

estimated by the superficies, and the whole rejected.




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