This, perhaps, was inevitable to his age,
to the swift passage of that young idealism: after forty, the nebulous
became a need for sensuous reality. Certain phases of Mina, as well,
were utterly those of a child--she had the eluding sweetness, the
flower-like indifference, of Helena, of a temperamental virginity so
absolute that it was incapable of understanding or communicating an
emotional fever. But, in the degree of her genius, she was above,
superior to, experience; it was not, for her, necessary; she was not
changed by it, but changed it into herself, into the validity of
whatever she intrinsically was.
His thoughts returned to the unfortunate occurrence in the library at
the Groves'; his indignation at Mrs. Grove was complicated, puzzled, by
the whole loss of the detached self-possession which, he had thought,
was her most persistent characteristic. Her expression, in memory,
specially baffled him; under other, accountable, circumstances he
should have said that it was a look of suffering, of drawn pain. He
couldn't recall the appearance of a shade of anger; yet the spoon had
fallen as if from a hand numb with--with resentment. No other deduction
was possible. He wished it were permissible to speak to her again about
what--but obviously--had been no more than an accident; he objected to
leaving such a ridiculous misconception of himself lodged permanently
in her mind.
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