There, he
believed, they were not singular; or, anyhow, he wasn't; he saw what he
was convinced was the same failure in the men past youth about him. But
in Fanny there was, he recognized, that fierce if narrow singleness of
impulse, of purity. His thoughts of other women were not innocent of
provocative conjecture--Anette's sinuous body, now as dead to him as
Alohabad, recurred to his mind--but in this Fanny was utterly loyal.
Yes, she had, a thing impossible for any man he had known, a mental
singleness of desire.
Was it that which had in her an affinity with the oppressors of the
picture, which made her, mechanically, the vigorously enlisted enemy of
the actual Mina Raff? It startled him a little to realize that Fanny--
for all her marked superiority--was definitely arrayed with the
righteous mob. She was sorry for those who failed in the discharge of
duty to God and man, and she worked untiringly to reinstate them--in
her good opinion. That was it, and it was no more! All such attempted
salvation resolved itself into the mere effort to drag men up to the
complacent plane of the incidental savior.
This recognition took a great deal of the vigor from his intended
conversation with Peyton Morris: anything in the way of patronage, he
reflected, would be as useless as it would be false. But he had no
impulse to forego his purpose; he was engaged to help Claire who was
too proud to help herself; yes, by heaven, and too right for the least
humiliation.
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