She remained silent, and kept her eyes firmly closed. She compared within herself the words he spoke, with those that had but just before so chilled her heart, his glances with those which her old friend had described, and which had been directed to another. She felt something within her which would gladly have pleaded for him, but too many voices cried against it. She had listened to Miss Betsy's tale as if it related neither to herself nor to him, like something incomprehensible, which she possessed no power of appreciating. But yet it was the last straw upon the burden, which she had borne for weeks past. Theodore deceived himself when he fancied that he alone had suffered from his miserable overexcited dreamings. That he was altered, that the first glow of love had paled, that his heart was no longer sure of itself had not escaped Mary's penetration. Whilst he was present she controlled herself for his sake, for the world she would not have let him see that she doubted him; and when she was alone she blamed herself, and said that she had seen falsely, and seen more than existed; that a man had thoughts sometimes that absorbed him, and followed him even into the presence of his love. And she knew too that the restraint her mother imposed annoyed him more day by day. And yet just at this moment a feeling of the deepest agony burst through all, and closed her lips and heart at the very time when words were so much wanted. She hoped for nothing from questionings, and of reproaches she would not suffer herself to think. She felt no acute pain, but as if paralyzed, so that she felt not that he was near her, and yet would have received a deathblow had he left her. So they stood in miserable self-deception opposite each other. He had already taken his hat, intending to put an end to this unbearable situation, when her mother entered. He must remain. Lights were brought. The women seated themselves, whilst he stood, answering in monosyllables, and cursing a thousand times both himself and his miserable fate. And, as everything disagreeable invariably heaps itself together at such moments, the mother began to talk of Edward's monument. He could not conceal that he had seen it that day for the first time, and was obliged to describe the feeling and execution of the work. He roused himself a little. "It is incomparable," he said; "I cannot express how it affected me. Edward himself, living but at the same time, glorified. And most marvellous, revealed through some strange inspiration of art, his very attitude, that peculiar, kindly way he had of bending his head forward, a peculiarity of which I never said a word to Bianchi."