She could not understand it, and she felt as if she had been
inconsistent with her constant professions of wariness in self-
revelation.
'It is an illusion, nevertheless--an illusion of the senses. It is
difficult to make what I mean clear, because insight is not possible
beyond a certain point, and clearness does not come until penetration
is complete and what we acquire is brought into a line with other
acquisitions. It constantly happens that we are arrested short of
this point, but it would be wrong to suppose that our conclusions, if
we may call them so, are of no value.'
She was silent, and he did not go on.
At last he said, 'The illusion lies in supposing that number, quantity and terms of
that kind are applicable to any other than sensuous objects, but I
cannot go further, at least not now. After all, it is possible here
in London for one atom to be of eternal importance to another.'
They had gone quite round Bedford Square without entering Great
Russell Street, which was the way eastwards. A drunken man was
holding on by the railings of the Square. He had apparently been
hesitating for some time whether he could reach the road, and, just
as Baruch and Clara came up to him, he made a lurch towards it, and
nearly fell over them. Clara instinctively seized Baruch's arm in
order to avoid the poor, staggering mortal; they went once more to
the right, and began to complete another circuit. Somehow her arm
had been drawn into Baruch's, and there it remained.
'Have you any friends in London?' said Baruch.
'There are Mrs Caffyn, her son and daughter, and there is Mr A. J.
Scott. He was a friend of my father.' 'You mean the Mr Scott who was Irving's assistant?'
'Yes.'
'An addition--' he was about to say, 'an additional bond' but he
corrected himself. 'A bond between us; I know Mr Scott.'
'Do you really? I suppose you know many interesting people in
London, as you are in his circle.'
'Very few; weeks, months have passed since anybody has said as much
to me as you have.' His voice quivered a little, for he was trembling with an emotion
quite inexplicable by mere intellectual relationship. Something came
through Clara's glove as her hand rested on his wrist which ran
through every nerve and sent the blood into his head.
Clara felt his excitement and dreaded lest he should say something to
which she could give no answer, and when they came opposite Great
Russell Street, she withdrew her arm from his, and began to cross to
the opposite pavement. She turned the conversation towards some
indifferent subject, and in a few minutes they were at Great Ormond
Street. Baruch would not go in as he had intended; he thought it was
about to rain, and he was late. As he went along he became calmer,
and when he was fairly indoors he had passed into a despair entirely
inconsistent--superficially--with the philosopher Baruch, as
inconsistent as the irrational behaviour in Bedford Square. He could
well enough interpret, so he believed, Miss Hopgood's suppression of
him. Ass that he was not to see what he ought to have known so well,
that he was playing the fool to her; he, with a grown-up son, to
pretend to romance with a girl! At that moment she might be mocking
him, or, if she was too good for mockery, she might be contriving to
avoid or to quench him. The next time he met her, he would be made
to understand that he was PITIED, and perhaps he would then learn the
name of the youth who was his rival, and had won her. He would often
meet her, no doubt, but of what value would anything he could say be
to her. She could not be expected to make fine distinctions, and
there was a class of elderly men, to which of course he would be
assigned, but the thought was too horrible.