She began to think about Carey.
How disgusting he had been. A drunken man must be one of two
things--either terrible or absurd. Carey had been absurd--disgusting and
absurd. It had been better for him if he had been terrible. But mumblings
and tears! She remembered what she had said of Carey to Robin
Pierce--that something in his eyes, one of those expressions which are
the children of the eyes, or of the lines about the eyes, told her that
he was capable of doing something great. What an irony that her remark to
Robin had been succeeded by such a scene! And she heard again the ugly
sound of Carey's incoherent exclamations, and felt again the limp clasp
of his hot, weak hand, and saw again the tears running over his flushed,
damp face. It was all very nauseous. And yet--had she been wrong in what
she had said of him? Did she even think that she had been wrong now,
after what had passed?
What kind of great action had she thought he would be capable of if a
chance to do something great were thrown in his way? She said to herself
that she had spoken at random, as one perpetually speaks in Society. And
then she remembered Carey's eyes. They were ugly eyes. She had always
thought them ugly. Yet, now and then, there was something in them,
something to hold a woman--no, perhaps not that--but something to startle
a woman, to make her think, wonder, even to make her trust. And the scene
which had just occurred, with all its weakness, its fatuity, its
maundering display of degradation and the inability of any
self-government, had not somehow destroyed the impression made upon Lady
Holme by that something in Carey's eyes.
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