He knew perfectly well that the average man would have felt no
compunction whatever upon this head. To the average man his
imagination (if he has any) is an unreal thing; to Rickman it was the
most real thing about him. It was so young, and in its youth so
ungovernably creative, that it flung out its ideas, as it were, alive
and kicking. It was only partially true of him that his dream was
divorced from reality. For with him the phantoms of the mind (which to
the average man are merely phantoms), projected themselves with a
bodily vividness and violence. Not only had they the colour and
authority of accomplished fact, they were invested with an immortality
denied to facts. His imagination was in this so far spiritual that it
perceived desire to be the eternal soul of the deed, and the deed to
be but the perishing body of desire. From this point of view, conduct
may figure as comparatively unimportant; therefore this point of view
is very properly avoided by the average man.
Rickman, now reduced to the last degree of humility and contrition,
picked up Lucia's shawl very gently and reverently, and folded it with
care, smoothing out the horrid creases he had made in it. He took it
to the other end of the room and laid it over the back of her chair,
so that it might look to Robert as if his mistress had left it there.
Would he see her again that morning? That depended on the amount of
work that remained for her to do.
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