Eunice was different. Pity, mingled with a rigid sense of his duty and a
faint accent of parenthood, comprehended his feeling for her. He stated
this to himself clearly, admitting what delinquency it carried. It was,
simply, an incontrovertible fact; and it was his habit to meet such
things squarely. A black Penny, he had no impulse to see existence in
imposed sentimental or formally moral conceptions. From all this he
returned with a feeling of delight to his personal longing for Susan
Brundon; he saw her bowed over the table in an exhaustion almost an
attitude of surrender. A slender, pliable figure in soft merino and
lace. He saw her beyond the candles of Graham Jannan's supper table, a
rose geranium at her breast. The motto of the bon bon partially
returned:
"... ange du ciel ... je t'aime!
... le bon heur supreme!"
XIX
In the morning he walked over to Stephen Jannan's office on Fourth
Street. The day was unexpectedly warm, and a mist rose about the wet
bricks of the city. He proceeded directly into Stephen's private
enclosure. "I was about to write you," the latter stated. "It's well
enough for you to direct Mrs. Scofield to confine her pleas to me, and
comparatively simple to picture her drawing a quarterly sum in an
orderly manner; but how you are going to realize that happy conception
is increasingly beyond me.
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