He filled out spaces with dim symbols of scenes; he caught
the gleam of white statues at the base of which, with his letters
out, he could tilt back a straw-bottomed chair. But his drift was,
for reasons, to the other side, and it floated him unspent up the
Rue de Seine and as far as the Luxembourg. In the Luxembourg
Gardens he pulled up; here at last he found his nook, and here, on
a penny chair from which terraces, alleys, vistas, fountains,
little trees in green tubs, little women in white caps and shrill
little girls at play all sunnily "composed" together, he passed an
hour in which the cup of his impressions seemed truly to overflow.
But a week had elapsed since he quitted the ship, and there were
more things in his mind than so few days could account for. More
than once, during the time, he had regarded himself as admonished;
but the admonition this morning was formidably sharp. It took as
it hadn't done yet the form of a question--the question of what he
was doing with such an extraordinary sense of escape. This sense
was sharpest after he had read his letters, but that was also
precisely why the question pressed. Four of the letters were from
Mrs. Newsome and none of them short; she had lost no time, had
followed on his heels while he moved, so expressing herself that
he now could measure the probable frequency with which he should
hear.
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