With it, he was free from these carking cares that
were making his mind foul and muddy. If he had money! Slow,
cool visions of triumphs rose before him outlined on the years to
come, practical, if Utopian. Slow and sure successes of science
and art, where his brain could work, helpful and growing. Far
off, yet surely to come,--surely for him,--a day when a pure
social system should be universal, should have thrust out its
fibres of light, knitting into one the nations of the earth, when
the lowest slave should find its true place and rightful work,
and stand up, knowing itself divine. "To insure to every man the
freest development of his faculties:" he said over the hackneyed
dogma again and again, while the heavy, hateful years of poverty
rose before him that had trampled him down. "To insure to him
the freest development," he did not need to wait for St. Simon,
or the golden year, he thought with a dreary gibe; money was
enough, and--Miss Herne.
It was curious, that, when this woman, whom he saw every day,
came up in his mind, it was always in one posture, one costume.
You have noticed that peculiarity in your remembrance of some
persons? Perhaps you would find, if you looked closely, that in
that look or indelible gesture which your memory has caught there
lies some subtile hint of the tie between your soul and theirs.
Now, when Holmes had resolved coolly to weigh this woman, brain,
heart, and flesh, to know how much of a hindrance she would be,
he could only see her, with his artist's sense, as delicate a
bloom of colouring as eye could crave, in one immovable
posture,--as he had seen her once in some masquerade or tableau
vivant.
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