the news, that she was by no means satisfied with such a trifle as the
climax to so special a suspense, she almost set him wondering if she
hadn't even a larger conception of singularity for him than he had for
himself. He was at all events destined to become aware little by little,
as time went by, that she was all the while looking at his life, judging
it, measuring it, in the light of the thing she knew, which grew to be at
last, with the consecration of the years, never mentioned between them
save as "the real truth" about him. That had always been his own form of
reference to it, but she adopted the form so quietly that, looking back
at the end of a period, he knew there was no moment at which it was
traceable that she had, as he might say, got inside his idea, or
exchanged the attitude of beautifully indulging for that of still more
beautifully believing him.

It was always open to him to accuse her of seeing him but as the most
harmless of maniacs, and this, in the long run--since it covered so much
ground--was his easiest description of their friendship. He had a screw
loose for her but she liked him in spite of it and was practically,
against the rest of the world, his kind wise keeper, unremunerated but
fairly amused and, in the absence of other near ties, not disreputably
occupied. The rest of the world of course thought him queer, but she,
she only, knew how, and above all why, queer; which was precisely what
enabled her to dispose the concealing veil in the right folds. She took
his gaiety from him--since it had to pass with them for gaiety--as she
took everything else; but she certainly so far justified by her unerring
touch his finer sense of the degree to which he had ended by convincing
her. _She_ at least never spoke of the secret of his life except as "the
real truth about you," and she had in fact a wonderful way of making it
seem, as such, the secret of her own life too. That was in fine how he
so constantly felt her as allowing for him; he couldn't on the whole call