She was sure of the
response to what she said, before she said it, and it came surely
enough. She felt that he understood her, and that she should be glad to
talk with him every day. Several days had passed since they had been
alone together for half an hour.
She compared him with the photograph of him, too, and she came to the
conclusion that the likeness was not so much flattered, after all. His
unusual pallor to-day had something luminous in it, and the features, in
two days of suffering, had grown thinner with a sort of finely chiselled
accentuation of their natural refinement. To-day, he reminded her of
certain portraits of Van Dyck. But when luncheon was over, she avoided
being alone with him, for she had not yet come to any decision. It would
be more true, perhaps, to say that she distrusted herself in the
decision she now seemed to have reached too suddenly. For in the
expansion of sympathy she enjoyed so much it all at once seemed to her
that she could never marry any one but Bosio, who understood her so
well, who anticipated what she was going to say, and knew beforehand
what she thought upon almost any subject of conversation.
She had never been exactly opposed to the idea, from the first; but now
it took possession of her strongly, as it had never done before, and she
might almost have taken her genuine affection for the man for love, if
she had ever been taught to suppose that love was necessary before
marriage.
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