The intimacy that had grown between her and her dead husband's friend had been too gradual to trace. It had started when Mrs. Basine had sat one evening in the midst of a company similar to this and thought, "Poor man. He jumps around like that and acts queerly because he's ashamed of himself. He's ashamed of not being what he wants to be." She did not quite understand what this meant but she felt herself suddenly close to the man after having thought it. He began to seek her company alone and more and more to use her as an audience for his ruse of transferring his self-rage into a critical indignation of others. A realization of Ramsey's character had stirred a pity in her and out of this pity she was careful not to let him see it. She went to the extreme of pretending a blindness toward his shortcomings and of accepting him for the thing he tried to make himself out to be--a giant among pygmies. She would agree with him in his attacks upon others, second his vicious caricaturing and appear always impressed by his desperate skepticism. Ramsey as a result had come to regard her as the one person with whom he had ever felt at ease during his life. Mrs Basine was a woman who understood him, that is, one who was completely deceived by him. In her presence the creature he struggled unsuccessfully to become, the masquerade of magnificence which his inferiority sought futilely to assume--in her presence these became realities. He would swagger before her, deride her, browbeat her and the rage which bubbled everlastingly in him would have respite. His mind seemed to uncloud and his talk would grow actually clever, some of his caricatures bringing an authentic laugh from her. But the widow as a rule would sit listening to him, watching his swagger, her heart lacerated by the poignant things it sensed. It was as if he were a little boy dressed up in an Indian suit and emitting war whoops and she must sit by and pretend real horror of his juvenile make-believe; as if he were someone who would drop dead with anguish in the midst of his laughter if she were to say aloud what was in her mind, "Oh you poor man, I'm sorry for you. I'm so ashamed for you." She did not understand why, despite these things, she felt a thrill of pleasure when she found herself alone with him. Her pity for the man seemed a pleasant excitement. It gave her a sense of intimacy toward him. She admitted this to herself but wondered about it. There had been one evening that remained confusedly in her mind. He had seemed unusually buoyant, she recalled, after it was over. His cleverness had actually diverted her--his caricatures of Judge Smith and Mrs. Gilchrist and even her own son. She had felt a certain truth in the distorted descriptions he gave of her friends.