Page:The Ivory Tower (London, W. Collins Sons & Co., 1917).djvu/325

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THE IVORY TOWER

him not to fit the fact of the younger girl's renounced, quenched, outlived, passion, or whatever one may call it, to any game of patience or calculation, rooted in a like state of feeling, on Morton's part. I want the full effect of what I can only call for convenience Gray's Discovery, his full discovery of them "together", in some situation, and its illuminating and signifying, its in a high degree, to repeat again my cherished word, determinant character. This effect requires exactly what I have been roughly marking—the line of argument in which appearances, as interpreted for himself, have been supporting Gray. "She has been in love with him, yes—but nothing has come of it—nothing could come of it; because, though he has been aware, and has been nice and kind to her, he isn't affected in the same way—is, in these matters, too cool and calculating a bird. He likes women, yes; and has had lots to do with them; but in the way of what a real relation with her would have meant—not! She has given him up, she has given it up—whereby one is free not to worry, not to have scruples, not to fear to cut across the possibility of one's friend." That's a little compendium of what I see. But it comes to me that I also want something more—for the full effect and the exact particular and most pointed bearing of what I dub Gray's discovery. He must have put it to Horton, as their relations have permitted at some suggested hour, or in some

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