See no one.
I'll get on, go to Susan. The thing itself should be short; her
character will assist you there. What a mess you have made of living,
Jasper."
XX
In the silence of the sitting room Jasper Penny heard diverse and yet
mingled inner voices: Essie's younger, exuberant periods, her joy at
presents of gold and jewelled trifles; changing, rising shrilly, to her
last imploring sobs, her frantic embrace of the man that, beyond any
doubt, she had herself killed. Running through this were the strains of
a quadrille, the light sliding of dancing feet, and the sound of a low,
diffident voice, Susan Brundon at the Jannans' ball. The voice
continued, in a different surrounding, and woven about it was the thin
complaint of a child, of Eunice, taken against her will from the
Academy. These three, Essie and Susan and Eunice, combined, now one
rising above the other, yet inexplicably, always, the same. Back of them
were other, less poignant, echoes, flashes of place, impressions of
associated heat or cold, darkness or light:
He saw the features of Howat Penny, in the canvas by Gustavus Hesselius,
regarding him out of a lost youth; he recalled, and again experienced,
the sense of Howat's nearness; integral with himself; merging into his
own youth, no less surely lost, yet enduring.
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