' I don't know what he
would like me to say! Under his inspiration!"
During the hours of Gordon's absence, Bernard had frequent colloquies
with his friend's wife, whose irresponsible prattle amused him, and in
whom he tried to discover some faculty, some quality, which might be a
positive guarantee of Gordon's future felicity. But often, of course,
Gordon was an auditor as well; I say an auditor, because it seemed
to Bernard that he had grown to be less of a talker than of yore.
Doubtless, when a man finds himself united to a garrulous wife, he
naturally learns to hold his tongue; but sometimes, at the close of one
of Blanche's discursive monologues, on glancing at her husband just to
see how he took it, and seeing him sit perfectly silent, with a fixed,
inexpressive smile, Bernard said to himself that Gordon found the lesson
of listening attended with some embarrassments. Gordon, as the years
went by, was growing a little inscrutable; but this, too, in certain
circumstances, was a usual tendency. The operations of the mind, with
deepening experience, became more complex, and people were less apt to
emit immature reflections at forty than they had been in their earlier
days. Bernard felt a great kindness in these days for his old friend; he
never yet had seemed to him such a good fellow, nor appealed so strongly
to the benevolence of his disposition.
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