In spite of the resentment to which Marchmont's scorn had
stung her, she understood very well how it was that her friends failed to
appreciate the motives of her action. To herself she could not justify
it; it was taken on impulse, not calculation, and had to rest in the end
on the vague effects of what she had seen in Quisante, not continually,
not in his normal state, but by fits and snatches, in scraps of time
which, all added together, would scarcely fill the hours between luncheon
and dinner. She took him on the strength of his moments; that was the
case in plain English, reduced to its lowest terms and its baldest
statement. Of confidence, of security, of trust she had none; their place
was filled by a vague expectancy, an insistent curiosity, and a puzzled
fearful fascination. Not promising materials these, out of which to make
happiness. She surprised herself by finding how little happiness in its
ordinary sense entered into her reckoning. Or if anything that we happen
to want is to be called our happiness, then her happiness consisted in,
and refused to be analysed into anything more definite than, a sort of
necessity which she felt of being near to Alexander Quisante, of sharing
his mind and partaking of his life.
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