It keyed her to a finer
and more eager susceptibility; and the things she saw stayed with her,
passing into a composite day which the years were hardly to dim for her.
She could live like that, for the purposes of a period, wrought up to
immense keenness of sense and brilliancy of energy, making steadily for
some point of feeling or achievement flashing gloriously on the horizon.
It is already plain, perhaps, that she rejoiced in such strokes, and
that life as she found it worth living was marked by a succession of
them.
She had kept, even from Lindsay, what she meant to do. When she stepped
from his brougham, flushed after the indubitable triumph of the evening,
with her arms full of real bouquets from Chatterjee's--no eight-anna
bazaar confections edged with silver tinsel--it occurred to her that
this reticence was not altogether fair to so constant a friend. He was
there, keen and eager as ever in all that concerned her, foremost with
his congratulations on the smiling fringe of the party assembled to do
her honour. It was a party of some brilliance in its way, though its way
was diverse; there was no steady glow. Fillimore said of the company
that it comprised all the talent, and Fillimore, editor of the _Indian
Sportsman and Racing Gazette_, was a judge.
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