Moving along a path converging on her own, Elizabeth perceived the
Squire. For the first time that morning he had put off their joint
session, and she had not seen him all day. Her mind was now always
uneasily aware of him--aware, too, of some change in him, for which
in some painful way she felt herself responsible. He had grown
strangely tame and placable, and it was generally noticed that he
looked older. Yet he was more absorbed than ever in the details of
Greek research and the labour of his catalogue. Only, of an evening,
he read the _Times_ for a couple of hours, generally in complete
silence, while Elizabeth and Mrs. Gaddesden talked and knitted.
An extraordinary softness--an extraordinary compassion--was steadily
invading Elizabeth's mind in regard to him. Something suggested to
her that he had come into life maimed of some essential element of
being, possessed by his fellow-men, and that he was now conscious of
the lack, as a Greek Faun might be conscious of the difference
between his life and that of struggling and suffering men.
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