THE IVORY TOWER
she so far faces this question of his "honour", or of any capacity in him for deviation from it, as even to conjure it away. There are depths within depths between them—and I think I understand what I mean if I say there are also shallows beside shallows. They give each other rope and yet at the same time remain tied; that for the moment is a sufficient formula—once I keep the case lucid as to what their tie is.
What accordingly does her situation in respect to Gray come to, and how do I see it work out? The answer to that involves of course the question of what his, in respect to her, comes to, and what it gives me for interest. She has got her original impression about him over there as of the man without means to speak of; but it is as the heir to a fortune that she now first sees him, and as the person coming in virtue of that into the world she lives in, where her power to guide, introduce and generally help and aid and comfort him, shows from the first as considerable. She strikes him at once as the creature, in all this world, the most European and the most capable of, as it were, understanding him intellectually, entering into his tastes etc. He recognises quickly that, putting Davey Bradham perhaps somewhat aside, she is the being, up and down the place, with whom he is going to be able most to communicate. With Rosanna he isn't going to communicate "intellectually", aesthetically, and all the rest, the least
295
