It was not odd that she should like him; but what struck her as amazing
was the peace that in his presence settled on Papa. Once he had got over
the first shock of his appearance, it soothed Mr. Gunning to see
Prothero sitting there, smoking, his long legs stretched out, his head
thrown back, his eyes half closed. It established him in the illusion of
continued opulence, for Mr. Gunning was not aware of the things that had
happened to him four years ago. But there had been lapses and
vanishings, unaccountable disturbances of the illusion. In the days of
opulence people had come to see him; now they only came to see Laura.
They were always the same people, Miss Holland and Miss Lempriere and
Mr. Tanqueray. They did no positive violence to the illusion; in their
way they ministered to it. They took their place among the company of
brilliant and indifferent strangers whom he had once entertained with
cold ceremony and a high and distant courtesy. They stayed for a short
time by his chair, they drifted from it into remote corners of the room,
they existed only for each other and for Laura. Thus one half of his
dream remained incomprehensible to Mr. Gunning. He did not really know
these people.
But he knew Mr. Prothero, who took a chair beside him and stayed an hour
and smoked a pipe with him. He had known him intimately and for a long
time. His figure filled the dark and empty places in the illusion, and
made it warm, tangible and complete. And because the vanished smokers,
the comrades of the days of opulence, had paid hardly any attention to
Laura, therefore Mr. Gunning's mind ceased to connect Prothero with his
formidable idea.
Laura, who had once laughed at it, was growing curiously sensitive to
the idea. She waited for it in dreadful pauses of the conversation; she
sat shivering with the expectation of its coming. Sooner or later it
would come, and when it did come Papa would ask Mr. Prothero his
intentions, and Mr. Prothero, having of course no intentions, would go
away and never have anything to do with them again.
Prothero had not yet asked himself his intentions or even wondered what
he was there for, since, as it seemed, it was not to talk to Laura.
There had been opportunities, moments, pauses in the endless procession
of paragraphs, when he had tried to draw Laura out; but Laura was not to
be drawn. She had a perfect genius for retreating, vanishing from him
backwards, keeping her innocent face towards him all the time, but
backing, backing into her beloved obscurity. He felt that there were
things behind her that forbade him to pursue.
Of the enchantment that had drawn her in the beginning, she had not said
a word. When it came to that they were both silent, as by a secret
understanding and consent. They were both aware of his genius as a thing
that was and was not his, a thing perpetually present with them but
incommunicable, the very heart of their silence.
One evening, calling about nine o'clock, he found her alone. She told
him that Papa was very tired and had gone to bed. "It is very good of
you," she said, "to come and sit with him."