In remembrance she had
come to picture him on board his ship, governing his little floating
kingdom with no feeble or hesitating sway. But here every impeding fact
of class and education, every worldly obstacle to his and her
intercourse, above all the hidden scandal of his birth sprang into high
relief. All the dividing, alienating influences of his antecedents, his
social position and her own, swung in upon her with aggravated intensity
and pathos.
Away, she felt sweetly secure of him. Sure his and her bond remained
inviolate. Sure his affection never wavered or paled, but stood always at
the flood, a constant quantity upon which she could draw at need; or--to
change the metaphor--a steady foundation upon which her heart could
safely build. He would not, could not, ever fail her. This had been
sufficient to stay her longing for sight and speech of him, her longing
for his bodily presence. But now, in face of the very concrete facts of
the island, the inn, which bore his name and where his mother lived and
ruled, of the property he owned, the place and people to which--by half
at least of his nature and much more than half his memory--he belonged,
the comfort of this spiritual esoteric relation became but a meagre
evasive thing.
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