For no one knew
how good he was; no one but herself. Everybody recognized his cleverness,
his brilliant abilities; even his enemies had to admit his extraordinary
intellectual gifts, and hated him the worse, of course, for the admission;
but no one, no one could guess what he was at home. She had heard of great
men who were always giving gala performances in public, but whose wives
and daughters saw only the empty theatre, with the footlights out and the
scenery stacked in the wings; but with him it was just the other way:
wonderful as he was in public, in society, she sometimes felt he wasn't
doing himself justice--he was so much more wonderful at home. It was like
carrying a guilty secret about with her: his friends, his admirers, would
never forgive her if they found out that he kept all his best things for
_her!_
I don't quite know what I felt in listening to her. I was chiefly taken up
with leading her on to the point I had in view; but even through my
personal preoccupation I remember being struck by the fact that, though
she talked foolishly, she didn't talk like a fool. She was not stupid; she
was not obtuse; one felt that her impassive surface was alive with
delicate points of perception; and this fact, coupled with her crystalline
frankness, flung me back on a startled revision of my impressions of her
father. He came out of the test more monstrous than ever, as an ugly image
reflected in clear water is made uglier by the purity of the medium.
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