That, Lee felt, given the rest, the fact that he was here as he
was, was sufficient; but--again still--he had had no voice in it. The
passion had inundated him in the manner of an incoming tide and a low-
water rock. Abruptly, after a certain misleading appearance of
hesitation on the part of the waves, he had gone under. Well, it was
very pleasant. In his case the celebrated maxims were wrong.
He left this, for the moment, and returned to what, actually, lay ahead
of him. Would Savina go away with him, leave the correct William, the
safety of their New York house in the style of eighteen-eighty? Lee
considered in her two impulses, not alike--her overwhelming passion,
herself generally; and her admission, no, cry, that she loved him, or
the special part he had in her. It rather looked as though he'd be
successful. It did for a fact. He had not been idle through all the
day, but had drawn from the Harriman Bank twenty thousand dollars. So
much had not been necessary; it was very bad business to segregate in
idleness such a sum of money now; but he enjoyed the extravagance of
it. Prudence, frugality, was no longer a factor in his affairs.
His present personal liberty, more complete than it had ever been
before--than, he added lightly, it might ever be again--was
astonishingly soothing. Sitting comfortably in a room in his customary
hotel, there wasn't a pressure that could be brought to bear on him.
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