Yet side by side with this feeling there was a great and a growing
expectancy with regard to him in his public aspect. He began to be a
figure, somebody of whom account would have to be taken; Dick Benyon's
infatuation was less often mentioned, his sagacity more often praised.
May was struck again with the sharp line drawn between the man himself,
and what he was to do, with the way in which everybody proposed to invite
him to his house, but nobody contemplated admitting him to his heart. The
inhumanity made her angry again, but she was alone in perceiving it; and
she was half-aware that her perception of it would be far keener than
Quisante's own. In fact it was very doubtful if he asked any more of the
world than what the world was prepared to give him. But that, said May,
was not because he lacked the power and the desire of love, but because
his affections were withered by neglect or rusty from disuse. She knew
well that they were there and would expand under the influence of
sympathy. If people grew human towards him, he would respond in kind; in
hitting on this idea she commended herself for a sagacity in questions of
emotion not less than that which Dick Benyon had shown in matters of the
intellect.
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