The condition Miss Tita had attached to the possession of them
no longer appeared an obstacle worth thinking of, and for an hour,
that morning, my repentant imagination brushed it aside.
It was absurd that I should be able to invent nothing;
absurd to renounce so easily and turn away helpless from the idea
that the only way to get hold of the papers was to unite myself
to her for life. I would not unite myself and yet I would have them.
I must add that by the time I sent down to ask if she would see me I
had invented no alternative, though to do so I had had all the time
that I was dressing. This failure was humiliating, yet what could
the alternative be? Miss Tita sent back word that I might come;
and as I descended the stairs and crossed the sala to her door--
this time she received me in her aunt's forlorn parlor--I hoped she
would not think my errand was to tell her I accepted her hand.
She certainly would have made the day before the reflection that
I declined it.
As soon as I came into the room I saw that she had drawn this inference,
but I also saw something which had not been in my forecast. Poor Miss
Tita's sense of her failure had produced an extraordinary alteration in her,
but I had been too full of my literary concupiscence to think of that.
Now I perceived it; I can scarcely tell how it startled me.
She stood in the middle of the room with a face of mildness bent upon me,
and her look of forgiveness, of absolution, made her angelic.
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