He remained there awhile, with his forehead against the glass,
in contemplation of the stupid shrubs I knew and the dull
things of November. I had always my hypocrisy of "work,"
behind which, now, I gained the sofa. Steadying myself
with it there as I had repeatedly done at those moments
of torment that I have described as the moments of my knowing
the children to be given to something from which I was barred,
I sufficiently obeyed my habit of being prepared for the worst.
But an extraordinary impression dropped on me as I
extracted a meaning from the boy's embarrassed back--
none other than the impression that I was not barred now.
This inference grew in a few minutes to sharp intensity
and seemed bound up with the direct perception that it was
positively HE who was. The frames and squares of the great
window were a kind of image, for him, of a kind of failure.
I felt that I saw him, at any rate, shut in or shut out.
He was admirable, but not comfortable: I took it in with a
throb of hope. Wasn't he looking, through the haunted pane,
for something he couldn't see?--and wasn't it the first time
in the whole business that he had known such a lapse?
The first, the very first: I found it a splendid portent.
It made him anxious, though he watched himself; he had been
anxious all day and, even while in his usual sweet little
manner he sat at table, had needed all his small strange
genius to give it a gloss.
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