He had turned
awkwardly, responsively red, he knew, at her mention of Maria
Gostrey; Sarah Pocock's presence--the particular quality of it--had
made this inevitable; and then he had grown still redder in
proportion as he hated to have shown anything at all. He felt
indeed that he was showing much, as, uncomfortably and almost in
pain, he offered up his redness to Waymarsh, who, strangely enough,
seemed now to be looking at him with a certain explanatory
yearning. Something deep--something built on their old old
relation--passed, in this complexity, between them; he got the
side-wind of a loyalty that stood behind all actual queer
questions. Waymarsh's dry bare humour--as it gave itself to be
taken--gloomed out to demand justice. "Well, if you talk of Miss
Barrace I've MY chance too," it appeared stiffly to nod, and it
granted that it was giving him away, but struggled to add that it
did so only to save him. The sombre glow stared it at him till it
fairly sounded out--"to save you, poor old man, to save you; to
save you in spite of yourself." Yet it was somehow just this
communication that showed him to himself as more than ever lost.
Still another result of it was to put before him as never yet that
between his comrade and the interest represented by Sarah there was
already a basis.
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