Page:The Princess Casamassima (London and New York, Macmillan & Co., 1886), Volume 2.djvu/224

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even the three days that Captain Sholto's sojourn lasted had not broken the spell, for the three more that had elapsed before his own departure (the Princess herself had given him the signal), were the most important of all. It was then the Princess had made it clear to him that she was in earnest, was prepared for the last sacrifice. She was now his standard of comparison, his authority, his measure, his perpetual reference; and in taking possession of his mind to this extent she had completely renewed it. She was altogether a new term, and now that he was in a foreign country he observed how much her conversation, itself so foreign, had prepared him to understand it. In Paris he saw, of course, a great many women, and he noticed almost all of them, especially the actresses; confronting, mentally, their movement, their speech, their manner of dressing, with that of his extraordinary friend. He judged that she was beyond them in every respect, though there were one or two actresses who had the air of trying to copy her. The recollection of the last days he had spent with her affected him now like the touch of a tear-washed cheek. She had shed tears for him, and it was his suspicion that her secret idea was to frustrate the redemption of his vow to Hoffendahl, to the immeasurable body that Hoffendahl represented. She pretended to have accepted it, and what she said was simply that when he should have played his part she would engage to save him—to fling a cloud about him, as the goddess-mother of the Trojan hero used, in Virgil's poem, to escamoter Æneas. What she meant was, in his view, to prevent him from playing his part at all. She was in earnest for herself, not for him. The main result of his concentrated intimacy with her had been to